Abstract
Car assembly plants have changed dramatically over the last twenty years, after the Kalmar model, lean production, semi-autonomous work groups and kanban. Or have they? By auditing the complex and intertwined learning processes taking place in a brand new assembly plant where the Punto, 1995 European “Car of the Year,” is manufactured, it turns out that radical changes in work organizations and operations have been implemented, but their impact stops halfway. The reason is due to the subtle influence that the Fordist “formative context” still exert on the way the plant is designed, and especially the way management knowledge is divided. By analyzing how bottlenecks and breakdowns are tackled by operators and managers, it is shown how the new division of labor requires a rethinking of the kind of know-how operators should master in order to cope with an advanced production system. The paper includes two important tools that were used during the analysis: a conceptual model of the learning organization, called the learning ladder, and the main steps of the learning audit methodology.
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Ciborra, C.U., Patriotta, G., Erlicher, L. (1996). Disassembling Frames on the Assembly Line: The Theory and Practice of the New Division of Learning in Advanced Manufacturing. In: Orlikowski, W.J., Walsham, G., Jones, M.R., Degross, J.I. (eds) Information Technology and Changes in Organizational Work. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34872-8_23
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