Organizational Change and Assembly Automation in the Dutch Automotive Industry

In the Netherlands, discussions about the limitations of traditional production concepts as well as the practical development of new production systems have been strongly influenced by the Dutch version of sociotechnical systems design (STSD). Japanese management concepts such as Lean Production (LP) tend to be compared with sociotechnical principles rather than with traditional Taylorist models as is the case in much of the international literature. This raises many questions. How do LP and Dutch STSD compare? Are they at odds, or might a combination of both be fruitful? What is the impact of these organization concepts on organizational design in practice?