Advanced manufacturing technology: The implications for human resources strategies

In recent years, the human factors community has devoted much attention to specifying the conditions required for successful exploitation of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). Through their accumulated experience and detailed analyses, practitioners have developed prescriptions for action which, it can be predicted with a high degree of confidence will maximise the chances of successful AMT application. Equally remarkable, however, has been the - at best - partial and incomplete application of these prescriptions as a means of improving industrial performance. This paper considers the reasons why companies have, to a large extent, failed to incorporate human factors thinking in their strategies, and why corporate performance has suffered as a result. The paper locates some reasons for the low utilisation of human factors expertise in a disjunction between, on the one hand, the ways in which chief executives see the world and articulate their concerns, and, on the other hand, the way in which human factors experts formulate and advocate the application of their proposals. Some examples of the problem are discussed, and specific remedies proposed.