Abstract
For a long time, researchers and practitioners considered manufacturing automation as the result of scientific and technical progress and thus as a growth factor exogenous to the production sphere. The speed with which it was adopted and spread, together with its perfection could vary depending on financial means and available competencies; however, many thought they could not do without if they wanted to increase productivity and quality. On a different level, there was a debate on the organizational and social effects of automation. This debate can usefully be summarized into the confrontation of three main research orientations by over simplifying it. For some, productive automation entailed a change in the content and the organization of work, and consequently in the competencies needed (Touraine, 1955), for others, it had no effect on work itself, organization choices were the only important things, and their origin was to be found in the education system and professional relationships of a given country (Maurice, 1980). Although it was considered marginal for a long time, a third research orientation is making its way to the front line today: productive automation is grasped as an endogenous and multiple phenomenon. It would assume different forms depending on the objectives and the economic and social presupposition which direct its conception and implementation. It would then effectively have organisational and social effects, and these would vaiy according to the forms it has, because it is a social construction in itself (Noble 1989, Freyssenet, 1992, 1997).
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Freyssenet, M. (1999). Competitive strategies, industrial models and assembly automation templates. In: Comacchio, A., Volpato, G., Camuffo, A. (eds) Automation in Automotive Industries. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59864-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59864-7_4
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