I am no expert on long waves but I think it makes
sense that regimes of technology and work organization
have a pattern of rise and fall. I don't see any reason
why the periodicity should be of any set frequency or
amplitude because as Barkley Rosser (I think) and Maggie
Coleman said, there are qualitative and historical factors
that condition the process.
I also think it was Barkley who said that information
technologies have not fully kicked in yet. It's not just
a matter of giving everyone a PC or replacing typewriters
with wordprocessing software. Information technology is
reshaping the infrastructure for production and distribution.
I'm convinced the full extent of automation has not been
achieved. I used to wonder why at the GE plant I worked at
they seemed to reach a plateau with the robotics and automated
systems that roughly corresponded to gross motor function. My
guess was that the cost of the R&D to develop more finely-tuned
robots was more than the cost of shifting work to non-union, low
wage environments. Now I think it is more a question that the
cost of the present level of automation became low enough to
implement on a wide scale. GE replaced one hulking robot that
I worked next to and I made some remark to one of the maintenance
guys about how expensive it must have been. He said it was no
big deal, a $90,000 off the shelf model. This was in 1989. This
line tested 2,600 refrigerator compressors a day on each of
two shifts.* I guess we're not looking at too many cash flow
problems here.
GE put automated systems in place on a section by section or
product by product basis. Some areas of this facility (Appliance
Park in Louisville, KY) are relics of the heyday of the Fordist
factory, others are like walking into a space station, others
are abandoned because the component has been sourced. One whole
building has been turned over to another company whose chief
function is distributing things like office supplies and toilet
paper and shop aprons to GE. The GE newspaper was quite elequent
about the convenience of just zapping out an order (electronically
of course) next door instead of dealing with hundreds of vendors.
I'm sure there a lot of factors involved in investment decisions
that are way over my head, but there is no magic number for the timing.
The timing of investment in new technologies is influenced by a lot
of things besides just the availability of the technology. When
equipment wears out, or when they redesign a product, that is an
opportunity to retool using state of the art technology. The labor
displacing effect of automation can work backwards. I have noticed
something like this; William Greider mentions it in Secrets of the
Temple (he was actually talking about Appliance Park); and a personnel
director I interviewed at another pillar of American industry during
a research project said the same thing. Workers get laid off when
demand for the product drops. But the company takes advantage of the
lull to retool so that as production picks back up, rehiring or new
hiring is at a slower pace.
I had a tour of this pillar of American industry, which builds
infrastructure equipment for the telecom industry - the kind of
gear that I imagine Maggie working on - escorted by one of their
chief engineers. He showed me "his" Baldridge Award. Outside,
the place has the same 1950s industrial architecture as the GE
plant I know so well, but inside the offices the Dilbert model
reigns - vast quadrants of cubicles wired into global sales,
marketing and customer service networks. Trust me, this outfit
has not yet heard that global is passe. In the factory every
workstation has a computer terminal. He showed me one area i
n the plant that was under construction. They were going to
install a pilot project that would reduce turn around (time from
order to delivery) on one of their products frommonths to days.
When asked what made it happen, he said the software to cut set
up costs for small batch production. Over time they will get
the bugs out of this system and will reconfigure other parts of
the plant to use it.
A lot of the problems in developing the next level of robotics has
to do with the robot-human interface. If a piece of copper tubing is too
flexible, someone is bound to adjust it a bit out of alignment with
the machine. There was one pesky green wire that got in everybody's
way and each person on the line would give it a shove so he or she
could work. If it wasn't exactly where it was supposed to be when it
got to where the fan was automatically loaded in, the fanload
would hang up, the line would shut down, alarms would go off, lights
would flash. This happened incessantly. But over time the bugs get
worked out - copper tubing becomes rigid, mounts and brackets get
fitted to hold parts in place, workers get trained to tuck the green
wire behind some doodad and leave it there. The best help a robot
can get is more robots who will put everything in the exact same
alignment every time.
Recently Sid Sniad posted an article that was supposed to signal the
end of reengineering as we have known it. No more slash and burn
downsizing. Companies should look upon their employees as assets
to be cherished and wisely utizlized. Or something. The example
they gave struck me as right out of Orwell. GE-Fanuc was touted
because employment there was rising - up 3% in the last year or two.
In the same period revenues were up 18%, kind of a little out of
proportion for my taste, but the real surreal thing is that what
GE-Fanuc does is make robots. So if their sales are booming (and
I would bet that 3% job rise is heavy on the sales & marketing side),
then somebody out there is buyinbg a hell of a lot of robots. I once
read an article about the Fanuc factory in Japan. Kind of an anomaly in
Japan in being owned be one man who loves the color yellow. Eerily quiet,
yellow robots build other yellow robots. While a tiny complement of
tech types in yellow clothes keep watch. I once worked with a Fanuc
robot - it really was yellow, but this was a GM-Fanuc model -although at
GE - go figure. Keeping up with GE is kind of a hobby (my kids think
more of a morbid obsession) so I recently checked out their web site. In
country after country there was a listing for GE-Fanuc. I'm sure a lot
of them are just phone numbers for sales reps, but somebody out there
must be in the market for this stuff.
I think we ain't seen nothin' yet.
*For all you numbers addicts out there, that comes to 5000+
refrigerators a day, 25,000 a week, 1.25 million a year, give
or take. (Not to mention over 5000 washing machines and maybe
2500 dryers a day, and something on the same order of kitchen
ranges, and dishwashers. Once upon a time they built the
compressors there as well. They still assemble refrigerators and
build some of the other components - evaporators and consdensers.
They used to make room air conditioners there too. Now GE buys
them and sticks its label on them. The parking lot at this place
is reputed to be a mile from end to end. Each of six production
buildings is the size of a city block and the warehouse could
swallow the business district of many a small town.
---------Laurie
