http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040308/005246.html
from which -
...both off shoring and increased manufacturing productivity can be linked together. Cheaper labor and manufacturing are the obvious capital benefit to off shoring. But another trend in manufacturing itself is also added---so Doug's article accounted for this too. The basic trend in manufacturing is to move to modular sections that are designed as single units composed of multiple functional parts. This increases the complexity of the manufacturing design and fabrication, but decreases the assembly and handling time, i.e. the skill and time needed for installation. In addition just as parts can be off shored, modular units can be offshored and delivered as a finished packaged units. In the case of re-designed modular systems productivity is magnified over time: once in the reduction of production cost via re-design and once in the off-shore transfer.
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This is an excellent example of the further Taylorization of labor made possible by the greater power and mobility (by which I mean, expanded field of usefulness) of contemporary computing hardware/software. Not only does this reduce production costs while boosting productivity, it also acts, I believe, as an inhibitor of skilled job growth.
For example, the detailed analysis and modularization of manufactured goods Chuck decribes -- along with methods for deconstructing fabrication work processes -- is all made possible by computer aided techniques. The complexity of such a high-wire act system probably could not be maintained without computer assistance in the same way, I'm told, Stealth bombers couldn't maintain reliable flight without computer intervention due to the complexity of their airflow control surfaces.
As two trends mature -- computing hardware/software sophistication and business' understanding of the uses to which this tech can be put (still evolving) -- we will see more examples of this sort of thing.
DRM