Big Old NamesWork and Economic Life
Big Old Names
Adam Smith 1723-1790: Advances in the division of labor
Karl Marx 1818-1883: Division of labor and resulting alienation
Taylor 1856-1915: Scientific Management
Henry Ford 1863-1947: Application of Scientific Management and the application of the moving assembly line in the automobile industry
| Side note for all the folks that still believe that Henry Ford was the inventor of the automobile (or Bill Gates the inventor of the Internet): | |
| The automobile was invented (and patented)
1886 by
Carl Benz. Later collaborating with Mr. Daimler, he named his cars
after his daughter: Mercedes.
For the folks who might not know, I am a certified mechanic with 3 years of vocational training at Mercedes. In the line of this training I worked on the replication of the first car for a museum. I took these three shots in Summer 2001(you can click for enlargements). They show the granddaughter of Carl Benz on the first car of the World and the car's engine. |
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Adam Smith 1723-1790: Advances in the division of labor
The Wealth of the Nations: Increased division of labor increases productivity.
Karl Marx 1818-1883:
The social results of the division of labor => sociological
Alienation
1. Work is a complex entity: washing dishes, hunting, fishing... Breaking it down into little pieces, people lose the concept of their being.
"As soon the distribution of labor comes into being each men has a particular exclusive field of activity, which is forced upon him,... . He is a hunter a fisherman, a shepherd or a critical critique" for his whole life " while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity" one can "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear a cattle in the evening and can critique after dinner ... without ever becoming a fisher, shepherd, farmer or critique". Tucker, Robert, C. 1975, The Marx - Engels reader New York: Norton. p. 160
2. Labor becomes an object, a commodity.
As a result we feel indifference to our work.
=> Specialization and the feeling of indifference to our work leads to alienation.
Taylor 1856-1915: Scientific Management
"Time studies" , not academic studies.
Break down complex production tasks and put them together in a most practical fashion to increase productivity.
A system of production to maximize output.
Only interested in the industrial efficiency, not the impact on social life.
Henry Ford 1863-1947: Application of Scientific
Management and the application of the moving assembly line in the automobile industry
He is not the inventor of the production line! They were used before e.g. in Chicago's slaughterhouses.
Job Rotation
was one of the first modification in the assembly line production.
Group Production
In the so called Volvo model a small group of highly educated wokers created an engine.
QUESTION: When we move from the assembly line concept to a group production.
What is necessary?
What are possible outcomes?
Flexible production
mass customizing
Bottleneck is not the level of output.
THIRD WAVE OF CIVILIZATION
Post Industrial: Information age
Just in Time Production
External suppliers deliver parts as they are neede in the production
Globalization
Textbook: the American Pontiac Le Mans? P.253
$20,000 for the buyer
$6,000 basic assembly to Korea
$3,500 high tech parts to Japan
$1,500 German engineering
$800 small components to Taiwan Singapore
$8,000 Detroit strategists, corporate lawyers, and Bankers in the U.S.
Women at work
Table: New York Times, April 27, 1995,p.B6. Percentage proportion of women in each field by year.
| OCCUPATION | 1970 | 1990 |
| Bartender | 27 | 57 |
| Physician | 11 | 22 |
| Economist | 14 | 44 |
| Industrial engineer | 3 | 27 |
| Lawyer | 6 | 27 |
| Public official | 24 | 59 |
| Psychologist | 43 | 59 |
| Nurse | 91 | 91 |
| Teacher | 74 | 74 |
| Librarian | 84 | 85 |
Question: What do you think happened in the decade of the 1990s?
Disclaimer: The documents linked to other sources on the WWW, others than http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/Schneider/ and its subdirectories, do not necessarily express the views of Texas Tech University or Dr. Andreas Schneider. @Copyright 2004 Andreas Schneider