New production concepts in the machine tool industry.

Abstract

In this contribution, we comment on some results of the Belgian Trend Study. The intention of this study was to examine the prevalence of new production concepts within the widest possible range of companies in the automobile, the machine-tool, the chemical and the clothing industries. The Trend Study aimed to answer the question whether the Taylorist division of labour is a thing of the past and whether shifts in the division of labour are accompanied by another type of personnel policy. The methodological concept used had to guarantee that the findings at the level of each industry could be generalized. Although a brief comparison with the evolutions in the three other branches is built in, we restrict ourselves mainly to an examination of the penetration of new production concepts in the main processing fields of the machine-tool industry.Industry;