Taylorism or the New Production Concept? The Economic Effects of the Introduction of CNC Machines

Abstract

For a long time fixed forms of automation played an important part in the discussions about the future of labour in industry. However in the last ten years this picture has changed considerably. New, flexible forms of production automation were developed and proved to be most useful in producing a greater variety of goods in smaller batches within a shorter period of time. The new forms of flexible automation also gave rise to a design of the labour organisation very different from the traditional Taylorist concept. In recent publications the pro's and cons of these New Production Concepts (NPC's) have been discussed. The present research project aimed at contributing to this discussion. In eight companies, that recently introduced new Computer Numerically Controlled machines and had different labour organisations (4 companies having the traditional Taylorist organisation and 4 organized along NPC-principles) we examined the effects of this new CNC technology on productivity, flexibility and product quality. Our basic hypothesis was that companies with a NPC-like labour organisation (high quality of labour) had higher productivity, flexibility and product quality levels than companies with a Taylorist labour organisation (low quality of labour). To gather our data we compiled a number of checklists that were used for our interviews with management, staff and CNC operators in the eight companies as well as for purposes of observation and documentary analysis. Our basic hypothesis found only partial support in the data: with respect to flexibility we found the Taylorist concept to be clearly less effective than the NPC type of labour organisation. With respect to productivity and product quality we found no general, significant differences between the two organisational structures. Only the lead times (one aspect of productivity) appeared to be much shorter for the NPC companies. However this has to do with the way production is organized (production organisation) rather than the labour organisation.