'Reflective Production': An Alternative to Mass Production and Lean Production?

In: Economic and industrial democracy, Band 19, Heft 1, S. 91-117

Abstract

The newly reopened Volvo Uddevalla plant is the only automobile factory in the world where 'reflective production' system principles are put into practice. This article attempts to analyse the implementation of these principles in the plant. Reflective production reattributes both cognitive and cooperative dimensions of ordinary activity to industrial work. Applying it to automobile assembly has proven that it is not necessarily econoniic or practical to 'deconstruct/reconstruct' work into elementary operations with the final stage of combining them sequentially. Insofar as lean production is concerned (best observed at Toyota in 1992), it continues to rely on traditional principles of additivity and fluidity. When compared to the Uddevalla experience, the lean production system remains one which seeks to limit loss of time inherent in additive assembly line production, without recognizing the very origin of this problem as being the production method itself.