Making Manufacturing Practices Tacit: A Case Study of Computer-Aided Production Management and Lean Production

The idea that operations in batch repetitive manufacturing can be managed using formal manipulations on representations of the manufacturing practice is at the heart of an approach called Computer-Aided Production Management. It is argued that the plausibility of this approach arises from certain widely held, but now controversial, views about the nature of purposeful human activity, which assume the need for a central representational model. Alternative theories of cognitive activity can be used to clarify the approach of a recently influential group of production management techniques, known as Lean Production, which attempt to use changes to the situation of production as their leverage point. It is claimed that implementation of these ideas depends on rendering desirable practices tacit, and this idea is illustrated using a case study.