EDIT: If you don't know what lean manufacturing is see Wikipedia, or ask me ;)
The other day I was sent on a day course on 'lean manufacturing', which got me thinking. I know Negri and others have written about Toyotism as a response to class struggle (i haven't read much of his though), so I was fairly surprised to have this thesis confirmed in the intro to a management book on 'Lean':
[Toyota's] system has taken 50 years to develop, and has been shaped by historical constraints. After the Second World War, stringent labour regulations made it much harder for Japanese employers to lay people off. Toyota found a way to turn this apparent problem to its advantage. Guaranteeing lifetime employment allowed it to establish rigorous performance management processes and create the conditions for continuous improvement
My initial thoughts are, that in true aufhebung style Toyotism both preserves and goes beyond Fordism. Fordism sought to reduce people to machines, Toyotism just uses machines to do machines jobs, but preserves a complex division of labour (albeit with more multiskilling) and uses people in their capacities which distinguish them from machines, i.e. it seeks to harness, and indeed shape human subjectivity (in fact 'lean' is often close to Marxism in emphasising 'people are the ultimate creators of value'):
The mindsets and behaviors of staff ... help determine whether changes can be sustained over time ... so effort must be devoted to defining and developing the behavioural state that will support [management infrastructure]
For most people, being given orders feels coercive [no shit!] - an affront to their autonomy. They may comply, but they'll probably feel resentful, which won't dispose them to be co-operative in the future
This attempt to integrate subjectivity into the production process itself is what i think Negri calls 'biopolitical production'. In fact at uni i was taught how to sack people using methods calculated to induce certain bio-chemical reactions in their brains (specifically, to avoid amygdala takeover). So the 'lean paradigm' doesn't just emphasise flows of value, but also neurochemical flows. As the first and last quotes respectively make clear, this strategy has been developed because of a specific balance of class forces and to mitigate opportunities for revolt by diffusing binary relations of power and attempting to internalise them within labouring subjects themselves - continuing the technique Foucault identified in panopticism, internalisation as the only strategy to 'survive' in a given system.
I think Negri relates all this to 'immaterial labour', which Aufheben have critiqued at length (its at home, i'll dig it out later).
What do people think? I'm getting an interesting view of things 'from the inside' at work as a proletarian producing statistics for management - it seems like a very interesting and relevant area for contemporary class struggle, and it raises the crucial question: how does one revolt within an individuating decentred apparatus of domination?
) were discussing how in china lean is uneccessary because labour is so cheap and can be hired and fired so easily. What china doesn't offer however is good lead times to core markets, and theres no easy way around this, especially with oil prices rises making air transport even less economical. Lean principles can also be applied to service industries. Thus, lean is explicitly a strategy for regions with historically better conditions (due to past struggles etc). Its very much current, like i say 'my' fortune 500 company is spending a fortune (ahem) on it. Since the goal is continuous improvement, by definition they can afford to give us a cut.
Hi
I'm working on a proof that this is an example of a "travelling salesman" type problem, it is NP-hard. It may even be harder, equivalent to asking "how do you make money fast?" or "how do you change someone's mind?".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-hard
The problem disappears under classical decadence theory, unfortunately that replaces one NP-hard problem with another. Having said that, as an example of a “Halting Problem”, it is at least known to be NP-hard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
Lean and Agile methods may, I suppose, supply the means of revolt by developing an objective efficient revolutionary process. It’s an avenue I expect to investigate soon, but I doubt I’ll achieve a “quick win” on it. Ha ha.
Love
LR