Ford doubled the daily pay of his workers to five dollars and claimed that the Fordian principles had the potential of putting an end to poverty In fact a major portion of the workers wages was spent on consumer goods which served as a lubricant for the moving line of economic growth However Ford wasn t quite the benefactor he d often tout him self as because he only raised his workers wag es out of sheer necessity In the early days of his line manufacturing operation they d run from his factory halls in droves The demotivating monoto ny of line work caused personnel turnover to sky rocket to 90 percent Peace and loyalty only moved in when Ford raised his workers wages and intro duced eight hour days with a three shift schedule However a fundamental problem of assembly line work remained Bis repetita non placent repeti tions are unpleasant as the Roman poet Horace al ready knew in his day Another point of criticism is the lack of satisfaction that comes from holistic cre ation Because all you do is turn a screw or two like Charlie Chaplin in his movie Modern Times Ford and those who copied him swept the issue under the money rug where it s been fermenting ever since In socio critical Sweden Volvo in 1973 made a bold move against Fordism At its Kalmar plant the automaker announced its departure from as sembly line work not least driven by the looming threat of a strike wave as well as high personnel turnover and sickness absence rates At the Ud devalla plant that was opened in 1989 the fulfill ing principle of holistic creation was adopted as well a team put together a complete car in the fi nal assembly stage Even though the productivity of both plants was deemed to be competitive for a long time both were shut down Volvo explained the decision by saying that without repetitive work higher levels of automation could not be achieved at the plants and that consequently they no lon ger had a viable economic future The irony of this industrial story In 1999 Ford swallowed Volvo s troubled passenger car division Today Volvo is a Chinese company Perfect monotony machines Robots are perfectly suited for automating repet itive work Robot is the Czech word for servi tude and drudgery The automatic toiler doesn t mind monotony goes about its work without stopping or complaining but with efficiency pre cision and speed and does so 24 7 the perfect partner for assembly lines In 1961 the first indus trial robot the Unimate weighing 1 8 metric tons 2 0 short tons installed die cast elements on car doors at a General Motors facility Robots and humans hand in hand Today not only car factories are full of robots Let s take SEAT s parent plant in Martorell near Bar celona for example where cars were still painted by hand up until the 1970s Today 84 robots apply the paint in a spray booth More than 2 000 robots are employed in the metal shop and 125 autono mous robots in the assembly hall Although that s an awesome number in total they re still a minori ty because more than 7 000 human colleagues are working side by side with them 7 2 km 4 47 mi is the length of the world s longest conveyor belt At a dizzying height in Barroso Brazil it moves 1 500 metric tons 1 650 short tons of calcium silicate brick per hour above trees hills and roads The humongous belt replaces 40 trucks per hour 37 In motion

Hinweis: Dies ist eine maschinenlesbare No-Flash Ansicht.
Klicken Sie hier um zur Online-Version zu gelangen.