Dynamic Capabilities and Manufacturing Automation: Organizational Learning in the Italian Automobile Industry

The search for competitiveness in automobile assembly is tendingtowards more cautious and selected investment in flexible automationtechnology. During the 1980s a number of car makers were luredby the myth of computer-integrated manufacturing, but recentsurveys show that approaches to automation (especially in finalassembly) have changed. This longitudinal study illustrates,on the basis of a plant survey, the automation strategy of FiatAuto, one of the world’s largest auto producers, tracingits evolution from the experiments of the 19 70s driven by industrialrelations pressures, to the ‘pan-technologist’ philosophyunderlying the ‘highly automated factory’ of the1980s, to the more realistic concepts inspiring the ‘FabbricaIntegrata’ organizational model of the 1990s. The papershows that the implementation of automation techniques and thedevelopment of related know-how have a cumulative and path-dependentnature. Furthermore, it is argued that the technologies usedin a firm's plants result from a non-linear learning process,based on the internal development, external acquisition, imitation,analogical replication, combination and selection of capabilities.The knowledge incorporated into technologies becomes an integralpart of a firm's repertoire of capabilities. Parts of this knowledgecan be retrieved over time, to become modules of original technologicalsolutions. Similarly, the necessity to imitate competitors whohave successfully implemented organizational paradigms basedon lean manufacturing in order to respond to the ‘regimeof variety’ can cause a mismatch between the existingand the desired technological trajectory of a firm.