Investigating Differentiated Production Systems: The U.S. Machine Tool Industry

Abstract

This article is intended to conceptually tighten an understanding of firm-level production systems. It should be read as part of a broader effort to conceptualize and analyze the social and spatial organization of innovation and production in a way that integrates the local, regional, national, and global dimensions within and across sectors of production. In the first section, we introduce models for analyzing (1) product and production strategies and (2) the social and technical organization of the enterprise. Taken together, they conceptually ground a typology of Differentiated Production Systems, which we present as a way of conceptualizing and analyzing the social organization of innovation and production at the level of the firm. The second section of the article introduces the machine-tool study and analyzes key variables associated with technological and organizational innovation in the respondent firms. In the third section, we present a set of case studies to demonstrate the applicability of the models we have introduced. We conclude with a brief interpretation of the U.S. machine tool sector drawn from our framework and a preliminary appraisal of the potential significance of our conceptualization.

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