For centuries, industrialization and factory-based production have been core ingredients in economic growth, development, and innovation. This symbiotic relationship between industrialization and economic prosperity is now changing. 'Megatrends' - trends within the domains of technology, economy, society, and ecology that have a global impact - are changing the ability of the manufacturing sector to serve as the engine of growth, changing traditional ideas of technological progress, and changing growth and development opportunities in both the global South and the global North. Four megatrends are particularly worthy of note: the rise of services, digital automation technologies, globalization of production, and ecological breakdown. In this book, Jostein Hauge provides a novel analysis of how these megatrends are changing industrialization, and charts new pathways for industrial policy and global governance. He also offers a wide-ranging account of the role of technology, globalization, and ecology in shaping the world economy. The Future of the Factory shows that industrialization remains a cornerstone of economic prosperity, but that power asymmetries in the world economy create uneven opportunities for achieving economic growth, development, and industrialization.

Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is the computerized handling of integrated operational processes between production planning and control, design, process planning, production, and quality assurance. The consistent application of information technology, along with modern manufacturing techniques and new organizational procedures, opens up great potential for rationalization by speeding up processes, thereby reducing stocks and improving product structure and delivery times. Following a comprehensive justification of the CIM integration principle, this book discusses the current state of applications and new demands arising from the integration principle as applied to the individual CIM components. The interfaces between business and technical information processing are considered in detail. The main emphasis, however, is on strategies for realization and implementation based on concrete experi- ence. The "Y-CIM information management" model, developed and tested at the author's institute, is presented as a procedural method for implementing CIM and demonstrated using up-to-date examples. In addition to the procedure for developing a CIM strategy, concrete sub-projects are developed which are directed at specific sector or enterprise structures. The survey of further CIM developments including design stage cost estimation, use of expert systems and inter-company process chains have proved to be effective CIM components since the first edition of this book and are now treated in the main text. Six German and five American industrial implementations are presented to illustrate the diverse areas of emphasis in the implementation sequence, and to indicate how CIM can be realized with currently available data processing tools.

The untold story of how restrictive policies are preventing China from becoming the world’s largest economy Dexter Roberts lived in Beijing for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg Businessweek. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts explores the reality behind today’s financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered. He focuses on two places: the village of Binghuacun in the province of Guizhou, one of China’s poorest regions that sends the highest proportion of its youth away to become migrants; and Dongguan, China’s most infamous factory town located in Guangdong, home to both the largest number of migrant workers and the country’s biggest manufacturing base. Within these two towns and the people that move between them, Roberts focuses on the story of the Mo family, former farmers-turned-migrant-workers who are struggling to make a living in a fast-changing country that relegates one-half of its people to second-class status via household registration, land tenure policies and inequality in education and health care systems. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Dexter Roberts brings to life the problems that China and its people face today as they attempt to overcome a divisive system that poses a serious challenge to the country’s future development. In so doing, Roberts paints a boot-on-the-ground cautionary picture of China for a world now held in its financial thrall. Dexter Roberts is an award-winning journalist and a regular commentator on the U.S.-China trade and political relationship. His prior speaking engagements include traditional news media outlets (NPR, Fox News, CNN International) as well as universities and institutes (George Washington University, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Overseas Press Club). He is available for virtual classroom visits to courses that adopt The Myth of Chinese Capitalism. Please contact [email protected] for more information.