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Top1. Introduction
When a new product is introduced to a manufacturing plant, new technologies and process changes are often added to the production line to leverage resources and maximize efficiency. Many times, changes in workflow and evolution of supervisory structure accompany the new technology as adaptations to circumstance within the implementation in attempt to avoid failure. An upgrade to a manufacturing process, the introduction of a new product on a production line, or even continuous improvement in an organization, may start as well-thought-out and structured activities. Unfortunately, even the best planned technical, organizational, or process changes can have a critical impact on the interface between social dynamics and technical systems if usability and performance are not factored into the project. Socio-technical frameworks allow us to analyze the introduction of new technology and the adaptation of social systems in manufacturing environments, where technological change is constant and is in direct competition for social, technical and capital resources within the organization.
The underlying goal of manufacturing entities during production is the optimization of the technical system. In recent times, this has taken the form of lean implementations. However, if the technical and lean improvements are not done jointly with social factors in mind, major problems may develop. A socio-technical system (STS) approach to the analysis of change management and new technology introduction is one that considers the social systems’ usage of new technologies to transform inputs into outputs. It describes how a social environment caters to the coordination of production, which in-turn has a profound impact on the value the entity creates. The most effective coordination of production on a factory-floor is based on the idea of extensive worker involvement which entails training, teambuilding, and hierarchical cooperation (Hyer et al., 1999). In an ever-evolving technological manufacturing environment with multiple competing management strategies and theories on organizational design, it would be useful to have a modern example and candid discussion about change related to new technology and adaptation with a socio-technical perspective. Within this discussion of organizational and production change, a Midwestern divisional electronics manufacturing plant of a Fortune 500 global parent company is used as an example. The company, a high-volume producer of Electronic Controller Units (ECUs) for the automobile industry will be referred to as ECU-Auto (name anonymized). Because the organizational model for the parent company located all the coordinating business functions at the main headquarters and central office, the regional manufacturing plants were each operated as their own profit center and essentially as an independent company. As a non-unionized plant, management was flexibly poised to make new product implementation decisions and add new technologies to the manufacturing process without need for extensive labor negotiations. This meant that at the plant level (ECU-Auto), decisions for strategy and new technology were at management’s discretion and did not necessarily involve worker consultations.
This first-hand case study details the plight of ECU-Auto, when a new product-type was introduced, continuing the lean production methodology. It seeks to explore the social and technical dynamics that come into play when a new product is introduced into an existing production line necessitating the addition of new machinery. Most often, in the academic literature surrounding the introduction of new technologies and techniques, little consideration is given to the role social and technical factors play in the failure of implementation. Instead, social and technical factors are separated from each other and studied independently in change management organizational issues. By delving into a new product introduction at ECU-Auto, these factors, both social and technical, are reviewed and brought into focus as being related to each other. In addition, potentially significant indicators in the management of introducing new technologies to a production line are identified, in an effort to engender the sociotechnical systems framework when studying technical change and improvement in an organization.