Standardized Mass ProductionStandardized Mass ProductionA man walks into work, takes his timecard and punches in. From there he proceeds to his spot on an assembly line and continues to do the same task over and over and over again until it is time for him to go home. There is not much thought that goes into his work nor is there really any skill involved. This is an example of what most work used to be like in the Industrial Age; the era of Standardized Mass Production. Standardized Mass Production was thought to be a way of making products for a mass market more efficient. A man by the name of Frederich Winslow Taylor thought that this form of production could be more efficient if those with authority used his form of scientific management known as Taylorism; a method which came under scrutiny by Harry Braverman, an American Socialist and writer, who believed that the Taylorism was not scientific management at all but a division of labor which destructed the simple task. By the 1980s a British sociological Marxist by the name of Michael Burawoy claimed that Hegemonic Regime was replacing Market Despotism in production politics and Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sabel, two professors at MIT, foresaw that Standard Mass Production was coming to an end giving way to what they called The Second Industrial Divide which they described as the rebirth of the craft.
What is Standardized Mass Production? To put it simply, it is the production of large quantities of standardized products for a mass market. In the 1920s, the steel and auto industries were best known for using Standardized Mass Production. In Standardized Mass Production, workers have one simple task to complete and, most of the time, dont know what they are producing or what it is for. Frederich Taylor went from business to business to influence managers to further standardize their production process. Taylor claimed that using his form of Standardized Mass Production would make the production process more efficient and allow the companies to increase production. Taylor refers to this form of scientific management as Taylorism.
The Standardized Mass Production program has been developed for a few years in the United States. The process uses a simple process called centrifuge. As with other technologies, centrifuges were once used to enrich uranium, but they have since evolved into more advanced methods and are not currently being used to produce metal or the metal used as fuel. As a result, some companies have replaced centrifuges with alternative centrifuges or that the program was abandoned (e.g., the U.S. Chemical Industry which, for instance, has abandoned the practice of using advanced centrifuges into its own products). Still others, like the CFC and the American Iron and Steel Co. want to make use of a process called nuclear-magnetic radiation that they say could allow for improved safety and security. However, the industry has not yet accepted as a viable alternative a method that could provide more safety and security, as shown in an article published in this issue of the New York Times. A study of the fallout from U.S. nuclear tests for a decade found that there was no difference in explosive hazard, risk to humans or in the nuclear fallout rates (in the United States, 40% and 50% of the fallout is nuclear fallout and the risk of nuclear explosions exceeds a 3% limit). Despite having been developed under the guidance of those who were responsible for developing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), many of the scientists responsible for many projects have publicly acknowledged that their research in Standardized Mass Production and other technologies was done during Cold War period. An article about this paper can be downloaded here. A summary of how the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s project in Standardized Mass Production has been developed and used is available here
A discussion of other potential uses of nuclear energy resources and how we can support them has been published
Many people who are working to protect humanity from radiation, including some of the most dangerous people in the world, believe that the world can no longer afford to live in nuclear power plants without the use of nuclear assets. If there was an alternative the world could make, there would be a much greater demand. But as much as the world is going to want uranium in the form that it is, it is worth considering what we will gain by using it to enrich uranium that is much more useful for our survival than that the world will continue to produce our products as needed. A better investment for the world is not going to be for enriching uranium that we have developed elsewhere. One that our government wants to use will be the use of nuclear energy to develop new industrial and agricultural technologies. This is a great step toward increasing energy security for the world as a whole and, of course, even for people whose natural capabilities make it much more expensive to build and test plants and the kinds of advanced technology that make up the planet. We have already seen where in the United States the government is funding projects to develop
Taylorism is considered to be more of an idea rather than a system. This idea is based on the fundamentals that managements primary focus should be to maximize the success for the manager and/or owner and also maximize the success for the employee. Taylor felt as though production was being compromised by many factors, one of which is the fallacy that the more work you do, and the higher the output, results in the loss of a large number of jobs. Taylor also refers to the “rule-of-thumb” method. The rule-of-thumb method explains how workers work. It states that the worker is doing the work the way that it was explained and taught to him. He doesnt question it, he just does it. Taylor claims this is completely inefficient because the way that he is doing his work is probably not being done as quickly as it could be, therefore not producing the maximum quantity. Another factor Taylor addresses is soldiering. Soldiering is when the employee works slowly to protect their best interest. According to Taylor, this is caused by a few factors. One factor is the ignorance of the workers who know very little about the history of their trade and believe that is it against their best interest to produce as much as possible in a day. Another factor is the ignorance of the employers to not know the amount of work that each worker is capable of. The last factor of soldiering is rule-of-thumb. This is the way that the job has been done generation after generation after generation and that is just the way it should be done. Taylor states that if a company were to “Taylorize” then they would be able to pay their employees more while increasing productivity and increasing revenue. Taylor made it a win-win situation which would be hard for any manager to resist.
While Taylor thought he had everything figured out, Harry Braverman believed there was more to Taylors idea than what he claimed. Braverman was not a fan of Taylorism as he believed that it was a crime against humanity because it takes the simplest of skills and transforms it into a detailed, step-by-step task which stops the employee from exploring their human nature of learning, experimenting, and/or thinking. Taylorism makes the employee completely dependent on the employer and takes away their self-esteem and confidence. Braverman believed that Taylorism was not about finding the most efficient way of production, but was more interested in increased control. With Taylorism there is a division of labor which is imposed on the worker by planning and control. Braverman concludes that managers are more interested in ultimate control over their employees because with control you have control over conflict in the workplace and managers are more worried about conflict than efficiency. Efficiency is more connected to the owners wants and desires.
Production politics