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Affluence
Published in Dain Bolwell, Governing Technology in the Quest for Sustainability on Earth, 2019
Mass production techniques involved new factories producing affordable consumer goods. When applied to complex manufactures and the assembly line, this technique became known as ‘Fordism’, after Henry Ford the car manufacturer,3 a term coined by Antonio Gramsci in his 1934 essay Americanism and Fordism. But the most important aspect of Fordism was its virtuous re-cycling of profits through increased workers’ wages, that then enabled workers to buy the cars they made, that enabled higher production, lower unit costs through economies of scale and so on. Gramsci was sceptical about this virtuous cycle and questioned “the so-called ‘high wages’ paid”, rather suggesting that Fordism was “the ultimate stage in the process of progressive attempts by industry to overcome the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall” (Gramsci 1999[1934], pp. 562–563). Growing affluence based on reduced costs of complex manufactures remains with us today. However, much of the lower costs of, for example, cars, apparel and homewares in the West is now due to exploiting the lower wage structures of the East, foreshadowed by Gramsci as part of an ‘international division of labour’ (ibid., p. 607).
The workplace of the future
Published in Jon-Arild Johannessen, The Workplace of the Future, 2018
There is a low awareness among the working poor concerning the benefit of joining a trade union to ensure higher pay (Shipler, 2005), partly because they come from poorly educated families (Grain et al., 2016). The young working poor even risk competing with their parents and grandparents for the same jobs. Even though their parents had a poor education, they could at least find jobs in industry, such as the car industry in Detroit. The assembly line technology, which was the distinctive feature of Fordism and industrialization, has now spread throughout the world. The ‘global assembly line’ today is located in various regions according to a logic of costs, quality, competence and innovation. The factory jobs in Detroit’s automotive industry disappeared to the low-cost countries. Working in the retail trade for poor pay was an option for those who could no longer find a job in the automotive industry. However, former factory workers might find themselves competing with their own sons or daughters for the same poor pay (Ainley, 2016).
The Wider Sweep of Global Lean Production
Published in Darina Lepadatu, Thomas Janoski, Framing and Managing Lean Organizations in the New Economy, 2020
Darina Lepadatu, Thomas Janoski
The regulation school examines two areas pertinent to our discussion: the decline of Fordism, and the rise of new models. First, the decline of Fordism was explained by a distinctly worker-led approach. Fordism declined because it alienated workers with the standardization of mass production, it promotes deskilling of workers which is dispiriting, and it created worker dissatisfaction contributing to conflict at work that in turn produced declining productivity, lower quality, higher costs, and declining profits (Edgell 2011; Aglietta 1978, 1979). This in turn produced declining incomes that resulted in lower tax revenues, which then promotes cuts in the welfare state as a threat to the Fordist compromise between labor, employers and the state. In other words, the rise of the neo-liberal political paradigm. However, the theory tends to discount the more consumerist explanation that says the massified standardization of Fordism in products and life-styles produced a demand for greater variety of products in stores and dealerships. Along with the introduction of computer technology, led to the ability to produce more diverse products from cars to food (Edgell 2011:100–1). For instance, the mass produced Budweiser beer in the United States eventually gave way to micro-breweries making unique but more expensive beer then led Annheiser-Busch to become more flexible and produce a wide variety of beers from Michelob Ultra for the health conscious to Amber beers that are heavier with more taste.3 They also purchased or created ten different craft breweries. While the Regulationists might concede that consumer tastes changed, they find the profitability crisis coming from worker dissatisfaction to be the dominant force.
Aircraft without wings: local design and serial production of utilitarian vehicles in Argentina (1952-1955)
Published in History and Technology, 2022
Leading automotive companies in the US or Europe were by then making vehicles in automated assembly lines and carrying out meticulous studies of each task to obtain what was perceived to be the highest productivity of capital and labor, industrial processes normally characterized by historians as Taylorism and Fordism. The technicians responsible for the manufacture of the Rastrojero did not develop a ‘rationalization’, in those terms, of the different phases of the productive process.22Rastrojero‘s serial production became effective in 1953, with the manufacturing of 1080 units (see Table 1). A year later, production increased by 28 percent, but it stopped producing the gasoline engine and started producing the diesel engine instead. Comparatively, at the same time, the Ford Company manufactured (for the American market only) 116,000 F-100 units per year. Why did IAME officials and technicians think it was not important to establish production and productivity goals for the manufacture of the Rastrojero? It is also worth asking, if vehicles were to be produced at low cost, why did they not consider labor productivity as a key variable?
Why human factors science is demonstrably necessary: historical and evolutionary foundations
Published in Ergonomics, 2021
J. C. F. de Winter, P. A. Hancock
Frederick Taylor’s scientific management was an innovation that sought to analyse workflows to improve efficiency and productivity. Fordism (viz. Henry Ford) was a similar economic production system founded upon work division and task standardisation. Followers of scientific management and Fordism argued that productivity was enhanced through proceduralization and standardisation, allied to economic incentives. After trying various sizes and weights of coal shovels until an optimal shovelling rate was identified, Taylor proved that he could improve worker productivity by a factor of three. Another example of this is the bricklaying research by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. In their ‘time and motion studies,’ the Gilbreths improved efficiency by removing demonstrably unnecessary actions (Gilbreth and Gilbreth 1917). Accordingly, the number of motions per brick was reduced from 18 to 5, while the bricklaying pace increased from 120 to 350 bricks per hour (Taylor 1911).
Changing use and performance of industrial estates from 1965 onward: the case of the Parkstad conurbation, the Netherlands
Published in Journal of Urban Design, 2019
Mid-century industries were mainly planned under a Fordist accumulation regime. The basic premises of making affordable products and of paying labourers sufficiently so they can consume the products translate into typical spatial production. Fordist spatial development, in congruence with modernist planning, has tied together the pillars of production and consumption in terms of both space and commodities such as the car. Sites of economic production were scattered across the territory, typically generated by leapfrog planning, and the need for connections to suburban residential zones led to increased importance of road infrastructure (Ryckewaert 2011).