Karel Williams

The hollowing out of British manufacturing and its implications for policy

This article presents new evidence of the ‘hollowing out’ of British manufacturing. It shows that large British firms are building up their overseas activities while the manufacturing operations which remain in Britain are increasingly sheltered and low tech. The authors argue that these developments set limits on the effectives of national industrial policy. Britains peculiar national problems must in any case be seen as part of a larger European problem about German manufacturing predominance

The Myth of the Line: Ford's Production of the Model T at Highland Park, 1909–16

This article questions the myth that the moving assembly line was Fords key productive innovation before 1918. It begins by analysing Hounshell and Lewchuks recent historiographic accounts of Ford. The article then refutes the myth of the line by demonstrating that the myth cannot be reconciled with Ford Archive evidence on the chronology of productivity growth and the composition of costs. A concluding section sets the moving assembly line in historical perspective by reinterpreting Fords achievement as the realisation of flow in repetitive manufacturing.

Do Labour Costs Really Matter

This article examines the size and significance of labour costs in modern manufacturing industry. Labour costs are doubly salient because wages are both part of the input costs of production and a way of distributing net output. The evidence on British manufacturing shows that labour accounts for less than half of production costs and two-thirds or more of net output. When profit is a relatively small residual claimed by capital, labour costs determine profitability. But the linkage to final product costs and prices is much weaker. The macro- and micro-economic implications of these facts are explored and the positive success of the Japanese in managing labour costs is contrasted with the negative achievements of British manufacturing. It is argued that British managers are handicapped by poor control of the production process and a narrow obsession with direct labour and work practices.

Management accounting: the Western problematic against the Japanese application

Management accounting (MA) in Japan as practised by a group of leading companies is often described and compared to the principles of MA in the Anglo-American tradition as exemplified in leading texts. Western textbook MA is shown to be a poor basis for productive intervention because it rests on a defective implicit model of manufacturing production which takes a single-product, single-process view of production and neglects the gains in labour and capital efficiency which can be realised by low stocks, small batches, faster set-up and improved layout. Little attention is paid to new product planning and development, whereas leading Japanese firms give these aspects of practice a privileged place corresponding to investment project appraisal in Western theory. The Japanese application of MA is shown to be of both intellectual interest and practical importance: it enables the exploitation of points of intervention which have been invisible (mostly) in the West, allowing Japanese companies to generate continuous cost reduction.