Product Variety, Productive Organisation, and Industrial Models

Most analyses of industrial models assume that production systems can be distinguished from one another by the level of product variety offered by manufacturers. An historical analysis of the development of diversified product ranges by automobile producers reveals that have been several different trajectories towards flexible mass production, and that the company which produces a single product like the Ford Model T or the VW Beetle is the exception rather than the rule. In terms of product variety, it is important not to neglect the relationship between productive organisation and technological uncertainty, a relationship which has been the focus of industry and academic studies of automation and which broadly determines the production process and even the organisation of product design. At the level of production, three factors appear to be essential in discriminating between industrial models in terms of principles of productive organisation: the issue of components, the utilisation of production equipment, and the management of the flow of production.