Human factors in manufacturing: New patterns of cooperation for company governance and the management of change

Innovation in manufacturing is driven by the globalization of competition, differentiation in demand, the shortening of the product lifecycle and the managerial innovations adopted by companies in response to the environment. Innovation has generated the new modular production system that allows greater product variety and variability. This new modular pattern in manufacturing determines a change in the priority list concerning human factors. Cognitive cooperation among all stakeholders in the manufacturing process, from suppliers to managers and workers, becomes the new focal point that must be developed and supported to ensure excellent performance of the modular factory and reasonable margins of identification for the persons performing the processes. The authors argue that both change management practices of a prescriptive type and those based solely on commitment are bound to fail in the medium term, as they are unable to address the autogenous character of change. If long-lasting change is to be generated, managers must understand and define the desires, intentions, and values denoting the subjective and collective identities of communities of persons at work; they must not be interested in direct self-promotion of that particular type of change that fits in with their own original characters and their history. This pragmatic principle applies both to the internal processes of the modular factory and to those external processes that link the company to its suppliers. In sum, it is the authors' view that the new horizons of human factors in manufacturing no longer rely on the best match between people, technologies, and the organization, as the capability to create cognitive spaces to construct new meanings. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 15: 403–419, 2005.