Automation, skill requirements and labour‐use strategies: high‐wage and low‐wage approaches to high‐tech manufacturing in the automotive industry

Abstract

In light of debates about advanced manufacturing and concepts like Industrie 4.0, this article compares labour‐use strategies in highly automated automotive supplier plants in a high‐wage country (Germany) and a low‐wage region (Central Eastern Europe). It shows considerable differences regarding skill requirements on the shop floor and the use of precarious employment contracts and examines three potential factors that explain them: national institutional frameworks, the power of employee representatives and the role of the plant within the companies and value chains. The analysis shows that the labour‐use strategies depend less on process technologies per se, but rather on the institutional framework and the role of the factory in the rollout and ramp‐up of new products and new process technologies. Such a role requires close cooperation between employees in the manufacturing areas and in product development, which in turn requires particularly high skills. The role of employee representatives in influencing labour‐use strategies proves less important. The article uses quantitative data from a survey of employee representatives, as well as qualitative data from in‐depth company case studies.

Digitalization and the geographies of production: Towards reshoring or global fragmentation?

“…This industry has been subjected by a surge in automation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as German lead firms require suppliers (mainly for quality reasons) to use the most advanced automation equipment. As some highly automated producers in CEE are now able to offer cheaper unit labour costs, manufacturers in Germany are less able to compete at the level of manufacturing excellency alone and are forced to redefine their roles as innovation-heavy manufacturing hubs in a multi-tiered global production network (Krzywdzinski, 2017; Schwarz-Kocher et al., 2018).…”

Old wine in new bottles? Revisiting employee participation in Industry 4.0

“…Technological determinist assessments are based on the assumption that technological innovation is an autonomous process with fixed, determined outcomes (Noble, 1987). For example, Krzywdzinski (2017) and Spencer (2018) criticise Industry 4.0 for being a technological determinist project. Assessments starting from a political materialist perspective such as labour process theory (Hall, 2010), but also other traditions such as the innovation literature (Fagerberg & Verspagen, 2009), or social construction of technology (SCOT) (Pinch & Bijker, 1984), emphasise in contrast to this deterministic perspective the contingency of technological outcomes and the social or political embeddedness of the technological innovation process (Edwards & Ramirez, 2016; Noble, 1984).…”

How human factors affect operators' task evolution in Logistics 4.0

“…According to the scientific literature, automation can both substitute for and complement human work (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2018; Autor, 2015); however, different evolutions of human activities can be envisioned, depending on their features or the ways of performing the tasks themselves (such as routinisation, formalisation, or required skills; Krzywdzinski, 2017).…”