Does the Digitalization of Manufacturing Boost a ‘Smart’ Era of Capital Accumulation?

Martina Fuchs

doi:10.1515/zfw-2019-0012

Abstract

Abstract‘Smart Manufacturing’ refers to a bundle of recent digital innovations together with the political initiatives that promote them. Public and academic debates indicate a fundamental shift in the socio-economic landscape, or a new era of capital accumulation in the language of regulation theory. A closer analysis of literature on Fordism and Postfordism, however, reveals that a ‘smart’ accumulation regime is at the most beginning to emerge, while earlier digitalization has already generated considerable impacts. This literature review first considers earlier contributions on digitalization and space that were published from the early 1980 s to the early 2000 s. It then discusses how this can inspire fresh views on Smart Manufacturing today.

Highlights

Abstract: ‘Smart Manufacturing’ refers to a bundle of recent digital innovations together with the political initiatives that promote them
Technicians, troubleshooters, repairpersons, and perhaps even programmers will be required to work in conjunction with a printer or battery of printers, and industry favors proximity for the suppliers of these functions (...). Such a fine-grained view on issues of Smart Manufacturing is in line with earlier contributions that are critical of broad-brush views of digitalization as a means of economic growth and social development
4 Conclusion and fields for future research. This contribution critically reconstructed the basic assumptions of regulation theory as a formerly widespread approach to analysing socio-economically embedded digitalization in the late 20th century

Summary

Introduction

Abstract: ‘Smart Manufacturing’ refers to a bundle of recent digital innovations together with the political initiatives that promote them. This literature review first considers earlier contributions on digitalization and space that were published from the early 1980 s to the early 2000 s. It discusses how this can inspire fresh views on Smart Manufacturing today. ‘Smart Manufacturing’ is a heterogeneous bundle of digital innovations that predominantly developed in the 2010 s It stands for cyber-physical systems (or the Internet of Things), i. E. systems based on digital platforms, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and cumulative network integration, moving towards self-organization of increasingly customized production. Smart Manufacturing brings together virtual data networks with the sphere of material production (Mittal et al 2019; Thoben et al 2017)

48 Martina Fuchs

Conclusion and fields for future research