REFLECTIVE PRODUCTION - AN ALTERNATIVE TO MASS-PRODUCTION AND LEAN PRODUCTION

The newly reopened Volvo Uddevalla plant is the only automobile factor y in the world where 'reflective production' system principles are put into practice. This article attempts to analyse the implementation of these principles in the plant. Reflective production reattributes bot h cognitive and cooperative dimensions of ordinary activity to industr ial work. Applying it to automobile assembly has proven that it is not necessarily economic or practical to 'deconstruct/reconstruct' work i nto elementary operations with the final stage of combining them seque ntially. Insofar as lean production is concerned (best observed at Toy ota in 1992), it continues to rely on traditional principles of additi vity and fluidity. When compared to the Uddevalla experience, the lean production system remains one which seeks to limit loss of time inher ent in additive assembly line production, without recognizing the very origin of this problem as being the production method itself.