Automation, work organization and skills: The case of numerical control

Abstract This paper deals with small and medium sized firms. Since the late seventies small and medium sized mechanical engineering firms in France have resorted increasingly to new technologies, and in particular to numerical control. Numerical control has introduced major changes in work organization. On the one hand it tends to reinforce the role of methods of production engineering whatever the type of numerical control may be. Programming is seldom left to the machine operators, except in the case of straightforward machining operations or in machining shops with a strong tradition of highly skilled or artisan labour. Numerical control, on the other hand, does provide more opportunity for collaboration between the workshop and the production engineers. On a workshop level it introduces a more mobile division of labour between programmers, machine setters and operators, which covers everything from the start-up of programs to the supervision of maching operations. The operator may therefore acquire new skills, but this is only possible if there are open-ended training systems available to facilitate the transmission of know-how from the programmers to the machine setters and from the machine setters to the operators, and vice versa. Small and medium sized firms would appear to have a special role to play in developing skills.