Auflistung nach Forschungsgruppen "Arbeiten in hochautomatisierten, digital-hybriden Prozessen"

Gerade angezeigt 1 - 20 von 28
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    Agile Methods on the Shop Floor: Towards a "Tesla Production System"?
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Daum, Timo
    This discussion paper investigates two questions: To what extend can Tesla be regarded as a digital firm, and do we - as a result - see elements of a distinct "Tesla production system"? While the EV-startup is widely approached as a competing automaker focusing on the electric drive train, which it certainly is, this paper argues that it can only fully be understood as a digital firm - a digital car company with a digital product embedded in a digital ecosystem. Its roots in Silicon Valley, its software-first approach, and its strategic exploitation of user activity data point into this direction. In the second part, this paper explores to what extent Tesla's rootedness in software and its Silicon-Valley ancestry gave reason to introduce methods borrowed from software development on the shop floor. To a certain degree, concepts from agile software development found their way to the very assembly-line at Tesla. Although it might be exaggerated to speak of a distinct "Tesla Production system", indications for a considerable and possibly enduring alteration of Lean Production paradigm can be determined.
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    Automation, Digitalization, and Changes in Occupational Structures in the Automobile Industry in Germany, the United States, and Japan. A Brief History from the Early 1990s Until 2018
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2020) Krzywdzinski, Martin
    In the current public discussion, it is considered certain that we are living in a time of rapidly advancing automation, which is driven in particular by the use of robots. Accordingly, many academic publications use robot density as the central indicator of automation. The present study challenges this perspective. It examines two central questions: First, what approaches to automation and digitalization have been pursued in the automotive industry in Germany, Japan and the USA? Second, how have employment and its occupational composition in the automotive industry developed in the three countries? The first part of the study focuses on the development of automation and digitalization approaches in the automotive industry from the early 1990s until today. It combines a qualitative analysis of press articles and a quantitative evaluation of the development of the stock of industrial robots from 1993 to 2018 based on the statistics of the International Federation of Robotics. The second part of the study focuses on the change in employment structures using occupational statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (USA), the Federal Employment Agency (Germany) and the Statistics Bureau of Japan. The study questions the perception of an automation-related threat to employment and especially to production employment. At the same time, it discusses developments in Germany, Japan and the USA in comparison and highlights differences in automation and digitalization approaches as well as different paths of change in employment structures.
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    Beyond “Industry 4.0”. B2B factory networks as an alternative path towards the digital transformation of manufacturing and work
    (2021) Butollo, Florian; Schneidemesser, Lea
    This article uses theoretical and empirical evidence of variations in digitalized manufacturing to revisit Piore and Sabel’s 1984 work on flexible specialization and to criticize the inherent one-sidedness of the Industry 4.0 discourse. This is juxtaposed with empirical findings on platform-mediated business-to-business factory networks, in which flexibility is facilitated by the digital interconnection of a far-flung network of small-scale manufacturers rather than by sophisticated production technology. The effects on work are equivocal; they entail the potential for a craft-like and skill-intensive paradigm of small-scale manufacturing that can upgrade work, but also for a race to the bottom in price-sensitive industries.
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    Colonialism, capital, and ressentiment
    (2021) Cooiman, Franziska
    Vogl’s new book relates finance to the internet industry and economics to politics. Introducing questions of colonial history and racism would further sharpen his view of the drivers and dynamics of contemporary capitalism.
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    Combining Experiential Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence. The Digital Transformation of a Traditional Machine-Building Company
    (2022) Krzywdzinski, Martin; Butollo, Florian
    The development of Industry 4.0 technologies creates leeway for the digital transformation of manufacturing companies, whose business models increasingly rely on software and data-based services. While several studies emphasise that manufacturing has no choice but to follow this transformation, there is little knowledge about how companies are actually managing it. This article uses the case study of a leading mechanical engineering company to analyse how the company organised the development of new digital technologies and how it changed its organisational structures and practices. It is based on 22 interviews and an analysis of company documents. The analysis draws on ambidexterity theory, which is extended toward a dynamic process analysis. It shows that digital transformation presupposes the development of structures and practices supporting cross-functional cooperation and the creation of new skill formation approaches. It develops a model of organisational change related to the digital transformation of manufacturing companies which includes the proof-of-concept phase, the partial exploitation phase, and the organisational transformation phase.
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    Deglobalisierung, Rekonfiguration oder Business as Usual? COVID-19 und die Grenzen der Rückverlagerung globalisierter Produktion
    (2022) Butollo, Florian
    The economic difficulties following the COVID-19 pandemic have seemingly reinforced the need for geographic restructuring and a reshoring of production, as they have demonstrated the vulnerability of globalized production. This article provides an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the geographies of production. Criticizing overly simplified perspectives on globalization, the article argues that global production networks are multiscalar and politically shaped phenomena. Based on these theoretical considerations and case studies on the automotive, electronics and clothing industries, the article concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be interpreted as a trigger for a general retreat from global manufacturing, but it reinforced longer-standing shifts toward more multipolar production and consumption structures. While the issue of global production network resilience has attracted greater attention in corporate strategies and industrial policies, the localization and regionalization of production networks is only one of several strategies, and it has hardly been implemented so far. Ongoing disruptions of supply chains, increased transport costs, and, above all, geopolitically and environmentally motivated policies could well lead to greater re- or nearshoring. Political efforts in this direction are, however, limited by pre-existing global economic development paths and the balance of power associated with them. In the conclusions, the article stresses the necessity of a politically motivated restructuring of global production networks in the context of an urgently needed social-ecological transformation.
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    Die Vermessung der Arbeitswelt. Wearables und digitale Assistenzsysteme in Fertigung und Logistik
    (Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, 2022) Krzywdzinski, Martin; Pfeiffer, Sabine; Evers, Maren; Gerber, Christine
    Der intelligente Arbeitshandschuh oder die smarte Brille: Mit der Digitalisierung rückt datenaufzeichnende Hardware eng an den Körper der Beschäftigten. Bewegungen, Vitalzeichen und selbst Emotionen können damit sichtbar werden. Was viele privat gerne zur Kontrolle von sportlichen Aktivitäten oder dem Monitoring der Gesundheit nutzen, eröffnet am Arbeitsplatz eine neue Dimension der Kontrolle. Die Studie gibt Einblicke in betriebliche Anwendungsfälle und die Einschätzungen von Beschäftigten. Es zeigen sich widersprüchliche Erfahrungen und ein deutlicher Gestaltungsauftrag.
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    "Digital Taylorism"? Data Practices and Governance in the Enterprise Software Salesforce
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2020) Nyckel, Eva-Maria
    This paper provides an investigation of the economy of the enterprise software Salesforce. The investigation looks at epistemologically distinct practices inscribed in enterprise software and challenges the notion of “digital Taylorism” by looking closer at current as well as historical practices of process management. While Taylor’s systematic approach involved a combination of distributed practices, Salesforce is an enterprise software platform that connects these practices digitally. Rather than examining the role of workers, the paper focuses particularly on the media techniques of Taylorism and the technologies in contemporary working environments that render organizational structures and courses of action available for algorithmic governance. Thereby, the paper seeks to contribute an additional theorization for organization studies and media theory. The mediated practices are conceptualized in four categories that allow for a contrast of Taylor’s approach with contemporary process management practices. In addition to an analysis of Taylor’s original texts and a document analysis of Salesforce whitepapers, this paper also presents empirical insights. The paper aims to shed light on the relation between techniques involved in Taylorist process management and governing modes of the enterprise software Salesforce.
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    Digital transformation and value chains. Introduction
    (2022) Butollo, Florian; Gereffi, Gary; Yang, Chun; Krzywdzinski, Martin
    New digital technologies based on the internet of things and artificial intelligence play centre stage in contemporary discussions about the prospects for economic development and the future of work. This article summarizes theoretical and empirical contributions on how these technologies affect global value chains (GVCs). We argue that the leading paradigms that analyse global production – the GVC framework and the related global production networks (GPNs) approach – are in need of some ‘technological uprading’ themselves. The GVC/GPN approaches acknowledge that technology is constitutive for the emergence of geographically fragmented production, but rarely address directly how technological change affects interfirm relations. The authors provide a framework that acknowledges the key role of technology while situating digital tools and systems in their social embeddedness, that is the role of human agency and institutions in shaping their development and impact. A research agenda is outlined focusing on three topics: the varieties of digitalization approaches in different world regions, the role of data as a specific form of intangible resource and the role of platform business models for industrial ecosystems. These topics are addressed in the special issue of Global Networks on ‘Digitalization and Value Chains’ introduced by this contribution.
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    Digitalisierung der Arbeitswelt in und nach der COVID-19-Krise: Thesen und Handlungsempfehlungen
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2021) Butollo, Florian; Flemming, Jana; Wandjo, David; Gerber, Christine; Krzywdzinski, Martin
    Es gibt Anhaltspunkte dafür, dass die durch die COVID-19-Pandemie ausgelöste Krise zu strukturellen Veränderungen der Arbeitswelt geführt hat, die in engem Zusammenhang mit Digitalisierungsprozessen stehen. Einige Veränderungen sind in industriellen Produktionsprozessen, der mobilen Arbeit und auch der Plattformarbeit zu erwarten. Damit solche Veränderungen sich positiv auf die Arbeitswelt auswirken ist politische Gestaltung gefragt. Beobachtbar ist, dass einige Unternehmen ihre Digitalstrategien überdenken, teils forcieren und vermehrt mit neuen Möglichkeiten experimentieren. Hier ist es notwendig, Betriebsrät_innen und Beschäftigte frühzeitig in die Gestaltung neuer Ansätze einzubinden. Am offensichtlichsten hat sich die Arbeitswelt in der Krise durch die digitale Kommunikation im virtuellen Raum verändert. Menschen die bereits im Homeoffice arbeiten, sind jedoch verschiedenen Schwierigkeiten ausgesetzt. Virulent sind Fragen der Geschlechtergerechtigkeit, die Vermischung von beruflichem und privaten, sowie die Ausstattung des häuslichen Arbeitsplatzes. Aufgrund der Erschütterung der regulären Arbeitsmärkte nahm auch über digitale Plattformen vermittelte Arbeit zu. Die prekären Arbeitsbedingungen der Plattformarbeiter_innen haben sich während der Pandemie noch zugespitzt, gleichzeitig ist international aber eine politische Regulierung der Plattformarbeit in Sicht, die inzwischen auch in Deutschland in Ansätzen stattfindet.
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    Digitalization and change in the global division of labor. Industrial work in transition
    (2021) Krzywdzinski, Martin
    The contribution discusses the impact of digitalization approaches in industrial companies and their implications for the global division of labour and work. It proceeds by investigating the scope and character of automation and its impact on the relationship between production locations in high and low wage countries. Contrary to expectations frequently voiced in public discourse the author does not identify a major push in automation in manufacturing industries (that would make a reshoring of production viable), because digitalization strategies rather concern new paths of flexibilization than automation. The effects on the geographies of production of technological change, however, result in new strategies of specialization and modifications of industrial governance, namely a refined division of labour between innovation-intensive production sites and their counterparts in the periphery. (The contribution is submitted in German language)
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    Digitalization and the geographies of production. Towards reshoring or global fragmentation?
    (2021) Butollo, Florian
    The relationship between digitalization and the governance and geographies of global value chains has not been explored systematically. This contribution discusses how digitalization affects the variables that determine the localization of manufacturing, i.e. the substitution of work through automation, the deepening of the customer–producer relationship, the rationalization of distribution through digitalized logistics networks, and the increased modularization of supply chains through standardization and ‘platformisation’. The results of the theoretical exploration defy expectations of a straightforward ‘reshoring’ of production through the combined effects of automation and benefits through a co-localization of companies within their target markets. Tendencies that would support a stronger integration of production in advanced economies are instead being undercut by ongoing countertrends towards fragmentation. The contradictory tendencies of a geographical integration of manufacturing and target markets on the one hand and geographical fragmentation through sophisticated supply-chain organization on the other will affect the technologically facilitated processes of value chain restructuring in a sector-specific manner.
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    Drivers of training participation in low skilled jobs. The role of ‘voice’, technology, innovation and labor shortages in German companies
    (2020) Wotschack, Philip
    This article investigates the role of ‘voice’, technology, innovation (of products, services, or processes) and labor shortages in the training participation of low skilled workers in German companies. By building on the key findings of previous research, hypotheses on drivers of training participation are derived from filter theory and the concept of social embeddedness. Regression and cluster analysis based on the German IAB Establishment Panel (wave 2011) show evidence that training participation is shaped by ‘voice’-related institutional company characteristics such as employee representation or formalized HR practices. Both characteristics often cluster together. Regression analyses confirm that companies in this cluster train a higher share of their low-skilled workforce. The share is particularly high when companies in this cluster face labor shortages. Apart from that, advanced technology and recent innovations at the company level are not related to higher rates of training participation among low skilled workers.
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    Emerging positions of German firms in the industrial internet of things. A global technological ecosystem perspective
    (2022) Lechowski, Grzegorz; Krzywdzinski, Martin
    The industrial internet of things (IIoT) has created entirely new inter-firm competitive and collaborative dynamics that focus on the supply of digital infrastructures, services and platforms for industrial users. These dynamics typically involve machinery builders, information technology suppliers and traditional technology buyers from various asset-intensive sectors. Given the global character of IIoT technology, transnationally relevant inter-firm arrangements have emerged for which we still lack a conceptually grounded understanding. This study addresses this research gap from the German perspective by combining the concepts of global value chains and complex technical systems. Empirically, we develop a multiple case study of established German firms that have provided IIoT technologies in the domain of ‘smart manufacturing.’ We investigate the firms’ evolving positions within the multi-layered IIoT stack and explore their technological dependency on global cloud-infrastructure suppliers. Second, we put the case study into the context of the recent German industrial-policy initiatives related to the discourse of ‘digital sovereignty’, which attempt to improve the positions of domestic actors vis-àvis the multi-national tech companies. Conceptually, this study offers the framework of global technological ecosystems as a new perspective on the transnational platform economy, which highlights the enabling character of global-scale digital infrastructures and acknowledges active involvement of non-firm actors in ecosystem governance.
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    Skill formation, automation and governance. Comparing German and Korean automotive manufacturers in Central-Eastern Europe
    (2022) Krzywdzinski, Martin; Jo, Hyung Je
    Purpose Building on neo-institutionalism models of the transfer of human resource management (HRM) practices within multinational companies, this paper aims to analyze the transfer of skill formation concepts using the cases of two automotive OEMs in Slovakia. The purpose of the paper is twofold. First, it aims to explain the differences between the two multinationals. Second, it builds on the empirical analysis to reconsider the neo-institutionalist theoretical framework. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on two qualitative case studies of automotive multinationals in Slovakia. The home country locations of both companies represent different approaches to skill formation: systematic vocational education for blue-collar workers is regarded as crucial at the German manufacturer, while the Korean company relies mainly on on-the-job-training and puts much less emphasis on skilled blue-collar work. Findings The paper shows that the differences between the companies are related to different understandings of technology/automation. It argues that the increasing automation and the decentralization of responsibilities for the product-launch processes supported the transfer of German skill formation concepts to the plant in Slovakia, while the Korean manufacturer’s specific engineering-led automation concept and centralization of product launch responsibilities in its Korean headquarters reduced the need to invest in skill formation for blue collars abroad. The paper concludes that theories of the transfer of HRM practices within multinationals must include technological factors and must also develop more specific concepts of the centralization of multinationals. Originality/value The paper is to the knowledge the first to include technology as a core variable into the neo-institutionalist theory in the field of international business and HRM. While the relationship between technology and organization has gained huge prominence in the recent discussions about digitalization, it has been so far neglected by scholars of international business.
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    Team Collaboration and Productivity: Experiences of agile, hybrid, and traditional teams with remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Krzywdzinski, Martin
    The shift to remote work poses particular challenges for teamwork. It makes spontaneous and informal communication more difficult and may weaken social relations in teams. This study based on an online survey of 1,516 individuals who worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic examines the functioning of teamwork in remote-work contexts and attempts to answer the following questions: (1) What organizational and technical working conditions influence working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic? (2) How did collaboration in different forms of teamwork evolve under working-from-home conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic? (3) What effects of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic can be observed in terms of teamwork productivity? Overall, the study reveals quite surprising differences between different forms of team organization. The quality of team collaboration and team productivity slightly increased in agile teams, even in a situation where at least some members of the team were working from home. In contrast, respondents working in traditional teams reported slightly negative effects of working from home on teamwork quality and team productivity.
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    The Growing Gap Between Pioneers and Laggards: Digitalization, automation, and organizational change in the wake of the COVID-19-crisis in Germany
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Krzywdzinski, Martin; Butollo, Florian; Flemming, Jana; Gerber, Christine; Wandjo, David; Delicat, Nina; Herzog, Lorena; Bovenschulte, Marc; Nerger, Michael
    The COVID 19 crisis has had a massive impact on the world of work. Based on a standardized survey of 540 company sites and 34 qualitative case studies in six industries (automotive, chemicals, mechanical engineering, logistics, healthcare and financial services), this study examines how companies’ digitalization and automation strategies have changed in the context of the pandemic. The analysis shows that the companies surveyed have by and large coped well with the crisis. However, an increasing polarization is becoming apparent. Digital pioneers intensified digitalization measures to a greater extent than those that were already behind in this respect before the pandemic. The focus of digitalization during the pandemic was particularly on supporting processes in administration, human resources management and sales. Automation also primarily played a role in these fields and only a minority of respondents expected employment losses in the medium term. Another key finding of this study is the correlation between technical and organizational innovation. It can be observed that those companies that invested more heavily in technical digitalization processes were also more inclined to make organizational changes with regard to management styles, working hours and work organization.
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    The Tech Company: On the neglected second nature of platforms
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Ziegler, Alexander
    The unprecedented rise of startups such as Google or Amazon has spurred an ongoing debate on the conceptualization of the corporate model these firms represent. Thus far, attention has centered on the analysis of their product and market strategies highlighting their platform nature as common feature and its defining characteristic. By applying and scaling the platform business model these companies have been able to capture value created outside the firm. The focus on the platform nature and the evolution of their external ecosystems, however, has left the work that is done inside these companies to create and provide online platforms largely unnoticed. Against this background, the article seeks to contribute to the debate by analyzing the inner mode of production as an essential component of their corporate model. The second nature of online platform firms, it is argued, is that they are tech companies. Building on this, the article aims to reconstruct how as tech companies they have learned and perfected to continuously develop and operate the internet applications that power their online platforms at global scale.
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    Unequal Training Participation and Training Experience at the Digital Work Place - an Interdisciplinary Study
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Vladova, Gergana; Wotschack, Philip
    Despite technological progress and the resulting changes, the human actor remains the decisive critical factor for the economic success of companies. This paper presents an interdisciplinary approach and research design to examine issues of unequal access to training in the new digital workplace. The research project combines an in-depth state-of-the-art study with an experimental design that tests in a lab environment how learning barriers can be tackled by manipulating the educational situation. In a final step, the methods developed and the results of the experiment are implemented and evaluated in the real situation using the example of one or more companies. The aim of the study is to identify possibilities for different actors in companies to better design working and learning conditions.
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