Deindustrialization Factors underlying decline in manufacturing High cost of wages High pension costs for workers Technological changes made it more capital intensive Companies failed to save or reinvest in research and development Fordism Names after Henry Ford pioneer of mass production of automobiles Highly refined divisions of labor within the factory Complex tasks broken into simple components suitable for unskilled workers Social contract between capital and labor Labor unions tolerated typically firms large and vertically integrated Post fordism Flexible Production Implosion in the 1970s and 1980s giving way to post Fordist flexible production unions pushed labor costs so high that they could not pay such high wages Changed into capital intensification Can be done anywhere Most important is the flexibility of the production process Including organization and management within the factory Just in time inventory systems Little idle capital you don t want stockpiles of material that you need to move and use All of your capital is tied up in vertical integration If anything happens to the price of your giant iron stack you re sunk Didn t need big warehouses they de vertigally integrated They start subcontracting because the small companies can do things better than the big firms Short run contracts labor The Future of Manufacturing in uncertain It could be the people with the most people the country that pulls in the biggest amount of skilled workers or the one with the most stable currency Or 3D Printing is the future People can print plastic items with free code People will stop relying on large firms for their products and they will just make it themselves