The Industrial Organisation, the Social Organisation of Work and Workers in the Automobile Industry

这个项目的目的是弄清楚日本汽车工业目前正在发生的四个阶段的变化，第一是生产体系，第二是企业和企业间组织，第三是工人的生活和社会意识，第四是产业关系。90年代，S日本汽车制造商处于全球经济竞争日益激烈，汽车生产布局全球化，国内汽车市场成熟的条件下。日本汽车制造商竞争力的最大优势是能够完成改善，在车间水平上不断改进。随着日本汽车制造商的环境迅速变化，他们正将主要目标从车间层面转移到所有企业层面，不仅是研发层面，还包括生产和汽车销售层面。此前，日本的汽车生产量年年直线增长，只有非常小的例外。但是，现在它年复一年地起伏变化。日本汽车制造商试图使生产系统更加灵活，以适应汽车产量停滞或减少的新趋势。“汽车工厂对工人和环境友好”的新生产理念是上述汽车产销新形势下从研发到生产和销售全面合理化的措施之一。20世纪90年代，日本主要汽车制造商S继续改善汽车厂的环境条件，将自动化机器引入装配线，并按照“完成过程”的新概念重组其装配线上的社会组织。

The aim of this projects is to make clear what changes are now taking place in the Japanese automobile industry at four phases, firstly the production system, secondly corporate and inter-corporate organisation, thirdly workers' life and social consciousness and fourthly the industrial relations.In the 1990's Japanese automobile makers are situated in conditions where global economic competition is becoming more and more severe, the arrangement of car production becomes global and the domestic car market reaches mature situation. The great advantage of competitiveness of Japanese car makers was the ability to complete Kaizen, to improve continuously at shop floor level. As environment of Japanese car makers are changing rapidly, they are moving their main target from the shop floor level to all corporate levels of not only R&D but also production and car sales. Before, the volume of car production in Japan grew straight year after year with a very small exception. But, now it changes up and down year by year. Japanese car makers have tried to make more flexible production system to keep up with the new trend of a stagnation or a decrease of car production volume.The new production concept of 'car plant friendly to workers and environment' is one of the measures of the total rationalization from R&D to production and sales in the new situation of car production and market mentioned above. Major Japanese car makers in the 1990's continue to improve environmemtal conditions of car plant, to introduce automatic machines into assembly line, and to restructure their social organisation of work in assembly line according to new concept of 'completed process'.