Flexible Production: Its Incidence and Implications for Labor Markets andEconomic Development Strategy

摘要

The study examines a set of hypotheses regarding flexible manufacturing: (1)manufacturing firms are increasingly relying on flexible strategies, (2) manufacturing flexibility coincides with vertical disintegration and specialization in core areas of expertise, (3) flexible manufacturing firms gain competitive advantage through economies of scope rather than scale, (4) these firms achieve such economies via networks of collaborative firms, (5) such firms and their networks tend to agglomerate geographically, and (6) such firm's flexibility requires a broadly skilled labor force. The study uses national data on changes in industrial flexibility, vertical disintegration, and agglomeration to rank manufacturing industries by their apparent degree of flexibility and vertical disintegration. Using this ranking, three top industries are selected based on their heavy presence in New England and their dissimilarity: aircraft equipment, medical instruments, and textile finishing. The bulk of the report focuses on these three industries. The findings indicate diverse strategies and patterns of interfirm relations in the three industries.