New Technology, Work and Employment 20:2

ISSN 0268-1072

Teamwork in factories within the

French automobile industry
Armelle Gorgeu and René Mathieu
This article analyses teamwork in French car manufacturing
plants and those of their suppliers. During the 1990s, the intro-
duction of ‘autonomous production units’ was aimed at reduc-
ing costs, increasing quality and shortening delivery deadlines.
Teamwork in a unit involved delegating responsibilities to
workers and led to an increased workload.

Introduction
This article analyses teamwork in French car manufacturing plants and those of their
suppliers. It presents various examples of how Renault, Peugeot-Citroën, Toyota and
several component manufacturers organised ‘autonomous production units’ and shows
the consequences of this kind of organisation on workforce management practices. It is
based on research that we have been carrying out for more than 10 years in the French
car industry (Gorgeu and Mathieu, 1995; Gorgeu et al., 1998; Gorgeu et al., 2002).
In France, the automobile industry plays a very important role in terms of employ-
ment, particularly in the northern regions where most of the French car manufac-
turers and their suppliers are located. Statistically, according to the Comité des
Constructeurs Français d’Automobiles (the French Automobile Manufacturers’ Com-
mittee), the jobs linked to the automobile industry were estimated to be 773,000 in
1998, whereas there were only 313,000 who actually worked for either the car manu-
facturers themselves or for the component manufacturers. The automobile industry is
also a key French activity in terms of production (the ‘automobile, vehicles, cycles and
motorcycles’ sector represents approximately 11 per cent of all industrial production)
and because of its pioneering role in reorganisation, methods tried out in this indus-
trial sector are then applied to the industry in general. Foreign investment is signifi-
cant, especially during the period 1998–2002, with the establishment of a Toyota plant
and the creation and acquisition of numerous supplier factories backed by foreign
groups including American, Japanese and European.

❒ Armelle Gorgeu and René Mathieu are both socio-economists and researchers at the National Centre
for Scientific Research and the Employment Studies Centre, an autonomous public institution under
the authority of the Minister of Research and the Minister of Labour. Their research themes are work
organisation, employment, human resources management, subcontracting and the French automobile
industry.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA
02148, USA.

88 New Technology, Work and Employment

 The concept of ‘autonomous production units’ is not new in Europe; the term was
first used by some automobile manufacturers, particularly by Volkswagen, as early as
the 1970s. For this manufacturer, the greatest characteristic of this concept of working
groups is that even as early as the 1970s, they were ‘developed and promoted by the
IG Metall trade union and not by company management’ (Labit, 1994) in order to
humanise work. The objective was to reorganise the workers’ responsibilities by integ-
rating different tasks at different levels of responsibility in order to offer the workers
the means of acquiring new skills and reinforcing their autonomy. However, from the
mid-1980s, management realised that using this concepts could be a way of increas-
ing productivity, and IG Metall was forced to stand up for its own conception of team-
work. With the crisis of the 1990s, teamwork was generalised within Volkswagen but
not yet standardised throughout the different factories.
In France, within the automobile industry, productivity growth is the motivating
force behind the recent set-up of autonomous production units. Intensification of inter-
national competition and the fact that the economy has become more sensitive to
shareholders’ needs have favoured the development of cost-cutting changes that aim
to eliminate wasted time, breakdowns and unnecessary actions and increase the flexi-
bility of equipment and workers in order to satisfy customer requirements more
rapidly.
The financial markets are a powerful means to impose on workers and productive capital a per-
manent rationalisation process . . . breaking production process into smaller units completes the
financial concentration. (Coutrot, 1998)
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the automobile industry has been undergoing a dual
process: companies have been bought out by powerful groups; plants turned into sub-
sidiary companies; and factories split up into several distinct production units. Car
manufacturers are transferring risks related to labour management to their suppliers,
who are being given an ever-increasing role in the production process. In turn, the
suppliers’ headquarters delegate day-to-day management to their plant managers.

The implantation of autonomous production units

Setting up autonomous production units in order to reduce delivery times is part of
a global process of reorganisation aimed at reducing costs, increasing quality and
developing internal flexibility. The restyling of a vehicle every two years, and particu-
larly the launching of a new vehicle, are key times to transform the factories of both
the supplier and the car manufacturer. Sometimes, a factory or workshop will be
created for this new product that will eventually replace an older product. This is a
good time to reorganise production by creating new positions involving more com-
plicated or more numerous tasks. The aim is to make the production worker more
self-sufficient.
The creation of autonomous production units is often the long-term objective of a
range of methods for reorganising work that adjust workers’ skills to company needs.
Actually, with the ‘just-in-time’ process, the regulating force is no longer stock but the
worker (Lehndorff, 1997). In the automobile industry, these organisational changes are
designed to develop the multitasking abilities of production workers, to eliminate jobs
that do not provide any added value, to increase worker availability and—all the
time—to improve the process whilst taking into consideration everyone’s specific
experience.
Reorganisation of the production facility is often the first step in this transforma-
tion. It enables the organisation of these units to be introduced gradually. For the work-
force, this brings new requirements for flexibility and multiple skills. These
modifications often clash with habits and mentalities, yet spread because of pressure
from the car manufacturer along with the support of consultants and the local net-
works. Car manufacturers encourage their suppliers to adopt methods of organisation
and labour management that they themselves have tried out (or would like to try out)
in their own workshops. They can do this during quality and productivity audits.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005 Teamwork in factories 89

Quality audits are therefore an opportunity for car manufacturers to force suppliers
to develop a system of suggestions or a company newsletter; to ask questions about
training, skill development and personnel motivation; and to provide clarification
about the documents and methods used. Some questions are also related to preven-
tive maintenance, cleanliness of the premises and working conditions. In produc-
tivity audits, car manufacturers are also interested in the direct costs of labour (i.e.
costs that are directly linked to the creation of added value for the product).
Spreading organisational change can take less authoritarian forms. Car manufac-
turers can intervene in the choice of consultants, for example, by encouraging their
suppliers to use their specific methods or by requiring the use of a specific organisa-
tion over which they have control or on which they rely, such as the Institut Renault
de la Qualité, for checking and/or monitoring. The two French car manufacturers,
Renault and Peugeot-Citroën, recommend the same methods, on the whole. They
have long encouraged their suppliers to change by working for many car manufac-
turers. Over the past few years, widespread changes have influenced the whole auto-
mobile industry. The automobile supplier groups, which mostly work for all the car
manufacturers established in Europe, are excellent vectors of change. The two main
French car manufacturers have not only encouraged them to adopt some tried and
tested methods but also to innovate on their own initiative. They then have to pass
on these new techniques to their own suppliers. Executive turnover, which is usual
in these groups (with executives moving within the same group and also to other
groups), also makes it easier to standardise methods. Consultants and local networks
are also important vectors for spreading change. Nearly all of the companies we have
studied use the services of one or more consultants who all have their own specialty.
They use consultants who have already worked for the group, are suggested by the
car manufacturers or are known by a member of management. Internationalisation
of capital invested in the automobile industry helps accelerate the introduction of
changes that have been tried out in other countries with very different cultures. But
we were told by several of the people interviewed that these changes can only be
introduced into France ‘once they have been adapted to both the culture of France
and to its laws’ (a personnel director in a Japanese plant in Brittany).
Before autonomous production units can be successfully set up, quite a long period
of preparation is often necessary, during which intermediate jobs are created between
those of the hierarchy’s and the production workers’, and new management methods
aimed at involving production personnel more in improving quality and produc-
tivity are adopted.

A preliminary step: the preparation period

For both car manufacturers and their suppliers, the factories that we studied were
using very similar methods in encouraging the workers to increase their own work
efficiency, to improve the processes, to share their knowledge and abilities with others
and to make their intellectual abilities available to the company. These methods use a
combination of constraints and incentives and owe a lot to Taylorism, yet at the same
time, they try to distance themselves from it. According to an expression used by
Steffen Lehndorff (1997), they constitute a ‘semi-reform’ with a delegation of respon-
sibilities without truly broadening the scope of the skills needed. Finally, work reor-
ganisation increases pressure and difficulties in the job. It tends to replace the
formalised supervision of work symbolised by the supervisor or the foreman, with
less formal, but just as significant, kinds of control: (1) self-evaluation and internal
group monitoring and (2) checks by team leaders who are not hierarchically superior
to the workers, by technicians or executives from the quality, methods or logistics
departments, which are part of the workshop, light or sound systems that everyone
can see or hear. These new kinds of supervision play on the workers’ self-esteem, their
spirit of competition and fear of unemployment. This destabilises existing groups and
creates an environment of mistrust, which is not at all helpful in developing commu-
nication—something that is usually desirable and even expected to be encouraged by

90 New Technology, Work and Employment © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

organisational change. This mistrust shatters the workers’ sense of solidarity to the
point of impacting on their private lives outside of the factory (Beaud and Pialoux,
1999).
Even in the factories where the creation of autonomous production units has not
been formally considered, jobs of ‘monitors’ or ‘team leaders’ have been developing
over the past few years. Their function is not integrated into the hierarchical structure;
they have a coordinating role in troubleshooting problems as well as standing in for
absentees.
Along similar lines, Japanese or Anglo-Saxon methods are used to prepare the
ground, train personnel or simply ‘change mentalities’, an expression commonly used
by our contacts. Certain methods really aim at teaching workers a specific technique
such as the tool-changing method called Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED), Total
Productive Maintenance (TPM), the ‘just-in-time’ scheduling system that reduces
work-in-process inventory (Kanban method) and the Statistical Process Control (SPC).
All these methods aim to improve production workers’ multitasking abilities. Others
are aimed at avoiding routine and encouraging initiative to get away from Taylor’s
methods. The establishment of a flexibility chart, which is generally the case in most
of the car manufacturer and supplier factories, has a triple purpose: to state clearly
everyone’s role in quality assurance audits, to motivate everyone and to facilitate daily
management of the workforce. Usually, the chart lists the various jobs to be done,
divides up work and indicates which workers in a workshop or in an autonomous
production unit are qualified to do them. Information is also given on the chart con-
cerning the training situation of each worker (‘in training’ for a certain job, ‘trained’
or ‘confirmed’ if the skills are actually being used). These charts are displayed so that
they can be seen by everyone.
Some of these methods may be used in organisations still following Taylor’s model
in old premises, whereas others require more updated facilities or trained personnel.
Experimenting with these tools must be done gradually and taken step by step, even
if some could be adopted at the same time. These methods are also used in factories
that have already established autonomous production units, because it is rare to
spread this kind of organisation to the whole factory; in any case, it keeps on chang-
ing. One of the most frequently adopted methods is the ‘5S’, so called because the five
verbs that summarise the ideas all begin with an S in Japanese (Clear away, Put away,
Standardise, Keep clean and Respect), which can be used in preparation for all the
others as a way to question routine and old habits.
The 5S method is a management tool that is particularly used in old factory premises
where the personnel is relatively old or strongly influenced by Taylorised work prac-
tices; it is therefore frequently used in old factories. It attempts to encourage produc-
tion workers to clean and tidy up the work area and to put everything away in its
place. It has been very useful in the context of quality assurance because cleanliness
of the workshops is one of the criteria evaluated during audits.

The effective implantation of autonomous production units

One of the main features of the sort of organisational restructuring of the working
environment that is trying to break with Taylorism is to replace the principle of ‘one
man, one job’ by ‘one unit for a given production’ (Mahieu, 1994) and to structure the
organisation of activities by prioritising the concept of unit, group or module. In fact,
companies use different terms to identify what are often very similar situations. The
group can be very small or relatively large, but there is always a collective sense of
responsibility and common objectives. Jean Pierre Durand (1994) ‘temporarily’ defines
the working group by four essential dimensions: internal autonomy of work organi-
sation, collective group responsibility for the quantity and the quality of production,
increasing group prerogatives and total—or almost total—absence of hierarchical re-
lationships between the different members of the group. In the automobile industry
in France, Renault pioneered teamwork with the first autonomous production units
appearing in 1989 under the name of Unités Elémentaires de Travail (meaning basic

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005 Teamwork in factories 91

or Elementary Work Units), which were rapidly spread to the rest of its factories and
subsidiaries around the world. Peugeot started experimenting with organised units
later. Car component manufacturers were also encouraged to develop teamwork
methods. New factories, set up near the car manufacturers’ assembly plants in order
to meet just in time delivery requirements, may provide the opportunity of experi-
menting with this kind of organisation. It seems to us that the place where teamwork
has really started to develop is in car seat manufacture, and, in particular, seat
upholstery.
We will briefly present the kind of teamwork set up by the French car manufac-
turers Renault and Peugeot Citroën as well as that in the Toyota plant located in the
north of France since the beginning of 2000 and the case of a few suppliers.
The case of car manufacturers
At Renault, the introduction of their autonomous production units was decided after
the ratification by all of the trade unions, with the exception of the Confédération
Générale du Travail, of the agreement of December 29, 1989 and was then extended
to the rest of the European subsidiaries in 1993. This organisation ‘does not mean that
the assembly line technique will disappear but rather that the tasks will be divided
into sets of jobs with their own coherence, and where the units also have the respon-
sibility for the client-supplier relationship; it is based on the assumption that homo-
geneous production units are created’ (Guérin, 1993). One of the things at stake with
autonomous production units is that a high enough level of multitasking can only be
obtained by a significant training effort. Each unit contains 20 or so multi-skilled team
members headed by a group leader and supported by both the coordinator and the
installation pilot (if the installation is automatic or robotised). On several occasions,
we visited a pilot Renault assembly plant employing some 6,000 people and was one
of the first plants to introduce autonomous production units. In this plant, the spread
of unit organisation dates back to 1992; and in 2001, there were 400 of them. The group
leader has a lot of autonomy. ‘He manages his small company of approximately 20
people’, said one of the training directors who had previously been a group leader.
At Peugeot-Citroën, experimentation of autonomous production unit organisation
was introduced in the Sevelnord plant, which opened in September 1992 in the north
of France and which was a joint venture between Peugeot-Citroën and Fiat. Sixty
autonomous production units (which they identified as ‘teamwork areas’) were
formed, bringing together 30 production workers with two or three team leaders who
are the ‘expert worker-trainers’. Each unit area is under the responsibility of a super-
visor called an ‘R P1’. Organising teamwork in this new factory was helped along
because its staff was young. In 1997, Peugeot Automobiles decided to generalise this
teamwork form of organisation to all of its factories and to call their autonomous pro-
duction units Unité Elémentaire de Production’ (Elementary Production Unit). The
Peugeot assembly plant of Sochaux, situated in the east of France, is the biggest factory
in France with its 18,000 people and has been operating with its autonomous pro-
duction unit organisation since 1998. The unit directors supervise 20 to 25 people,
including temporary staff.
The Toyota plant, recently set up in the north of France, had 2,100 employees in
March 2002. We were able to obtain information about the teamwork used there from
a team leader who could compare its system with Renault as he had been a tempo-
rary worker there in the past.
It is Taylorism, but there are differences compared with Renault. Toyota has always organised its
production teams into small groups of only 5 to 7 people, composed of manual operators called
‘team members’, and one ‘team leader’, who is a multi-skilled coordinator in charge of leading the
production unit without actually having a hierarchical role. It is the ‘group leader’, the equivalent
of supervisor, who has the hierarchical role and is responsible for 3 or 4 teams. I was hired as a
‘team leader’, which gives me a slightly higher salary than if I were just a ‘team member’. I went
to Japan for 3 weeks and to England for 3 weeks. I observed the rate of work there and Toyota’s
paternalism. Generally, Toyota only hires people for team member positions and then promotes
their team leaders internally. However, in my case, because it was a new factory, they had to hire
a few people right from the beginning as team leaders. The number of people in a unit varies

92 New Technology, Work and Employment © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

 according to the production rate of finished cars leaving the plant. If this rate accelerates, there are
more of us. So, for a rate of one car every 108 seconds, we were 7, but now there is a car every 90
seconds, so there are 8 of us. There is a planned rate of 72 seconds where there will be 9 per pro-
duction unit. With each change, productivity for the company increases and the job becomes more
stressful. There are still Japanese team leaders and group leaders and this will continue to be the
case in the future, because Toyota needs to know how production is managed at a basic level. They
act as eyes and ears for the management. In the production unit, each worker works on 3 or 4 posi-
tions, and we change tasks a lot more frequently than at Renault every 2 hours and sometimes
every hour on some of the difficult positions, whereas at Renault the change is only once a day. In
a given unit there is a combination of solidarity and competition. Some positions are physically
difficult for people over 30; so, if possible, I ask the youngest workers to hold them first, but they
tell me that ‘I’ll be as burned out by the age of 30 as they will be by the age of 40’. The work of a
team leader is less difficult than that of a team member: we pass on instructions; we have specific
training, some of which is taken seriously and lasts for several days to learn how to train workers
at a particular position. Others useless, just a series of meetings, mostly just to keep us posted on
cost-reduction goals.

Some examples from suppliers

With the exception of a large and very innovative component group where the organ-
isation of autonomous production units was established several years ago, this has
been a fairly recent development for all the suppliers studied; also, this kind of organ-
isation is likely to change. From 1994 to 1995, autonomous production units were rare
in the new automobile component factories studied; we found them in the seat up-
holstery sections, under the name of modules (see box below), and in some plastic
companies (Gorgeu, Mathieu, 1995). The interviews given between 1996 and 1997
show that this kind of organisation has a tendency to spread in suppliers’ factories,
but nothing is written in stone, and within the same factory, autonomous production
units may often vary greatly in size.

Autonomous production units for seat upholstery in car-seat manufacturing

plants located near automobile assembly factories in order to deliver
‘just in time’

In the new car seat manufacturing factories in France, working in autonomous pro-
duction units, which is generally the case for seat upholstery, is very different from
what has been developed by car manufacturers because the teams are considerably
smaller (from two to four people depending on the type of vehicle). The units have
more workers for luxury range seats. The group members organise themselves the
way they want, but there is a set time for assembling all the seats for each car. They
benefit from collective team bonuses, in particular, for quality. However, a sense of
competition is often present between the different team members, and since they
do not receive the same wage, the seat upholstery supervisor will identify those
who ‘work slowly’ from those who play the role of leader. The establishment of
seat upholstery units allows people to work at fixed positions, because the seat is
removed from the assembly line, assembled and put back on the conveyer belt. This
is not as hard a job as work on the conveyor belt where the manual operator needs
to follow along the line while working, but it is still difficult because of the weight
and the physical effort required, particularly if the stapling of the seat covers is
done manually, and also, on account of stress linked to the speed of the movements
required.
Each worker assembles a complete seat and needs to know how to assemble the
two front seats and the back seat. With the multiplication of the different models,
there is a succession of different assembly kits that do not necessarily resemble one
another. When the company works on two vehicles from the same range, the per-
sonnel can go from one to the other. Working fast and well, in harmony with the
other workers in the unit implies building a team based on affinity. In theory, the
workers within a given unit need to alternate frequently between the different job

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005 Teamwork in factories 93

 positions. In fact, it appears that at full production rate, assembly is shared accord-
ing to the efficiency of each member; some assemble the front seats, others the back.
‘After a difficult apprenticeship, a production worker who has mastered the oper-
ations at a particular position does not usually want to repeat the learning experi-
ence for another position’, said one of the interviewees. Each group manages its
own quality and productivity, the results of which are displayed in the factory. This
enables workers to make comparisons with other units.

In 2001, organisation into production units in many automobile component fac-

tories was still experimental. Usually, it only concerned the new or newly up-
graded workshops. We now present two examples of plastic industry plants where
the setting up of production units is fairly well developed and has spread to practically
the whole factory.
The first one, located in the north of France, is an important automobile component
factory that manufactures dashboards, which we studied for the first time in 1996,
when it belonged to a French group, and a second time in 2001, when it had just been
bought by a very large American group. In this factory, experimentation with pro-
duction units dates back to 1998. For several years before this, the 5S method had been
strongly developed. This method is no longer followed. However, today there is strong
emphasis on first-line maintenance. The units do not have a fixed size. There can be
plastic injection using a unit of four people for three presses under the responsibility
of a team leader. The team leaders are young ‘mould assemblers’, holding ‘BTS’ ( BTS
and DUT are vocational degrees obtained two years after the baccalauréat) or having
a baccalauréat (in France, the degree that finishes secondary school). They are trained
specifically to manage these production units, to take care of administrative tasks and
to help in the assembly of moulds. During our visit in 2001, the management was
negotiating with trade union organisations so that the team leaders would not be hier-
archical but classified as line workers. Next to the unit, there are charts showing a lot
of data (e.g. rejection rates, work accident rates, overall performance rate, the number
of suggestions—with objectives and results). The team leader changes the moulds,
manages the kanban, starts the machine, stands in for absentee team members, cleans,
and keeps the presses supplied with raw plastic material. As soon as there is a
problem, he finds the tools fitter or the electrician. On Monday mornings, team leaders
have a meeting with the technical directors, and they have to explain the problems
that occurred in their unit the previous week. In this factory, the team leaders super-
vise 4 or 5 people, yet are paid the same as the other production workers.
The second factory, situated in Normandy (visited in April 2002), is considerably
smaller. It specialises in acoustic noise-reduction plastic parts, and has belonged to a
Swiss group for a long time. The factory has been completely organised into
autonomous production units since the end of 2001. The director, who previously
worked at Renault, explained his approach.
The objective was to improve work efficiency in the factory and to train the staff in order to increase
productivity. We have been talking about autonomous production units since 1997. We wanted to
see how other companies worked which in principle were working in units. We saw three and were
not really satisfied. We approached Renault and some consultants as well. In order to change
people’s attitudes, we were helped by the Institut Renault de la Qualité and a consultant who does
audits for Peugeot. We have huge problems with the labour force and profitability partly for his-
toric reasons. Historically, the factory has had strong trade unions because, when it was first opened
in 1971, a lot of dockers were hired because their activities had been reduced. Strikes were frequent
and when I arrived in 1994 there was a 6 day strike. To the employees’ way of thinking, increas-
ing productivity means less job creation, therefore it was very difficult to do anything to improve
productivity. Nevertheless, we did try to implicate the staff in the process by talking about work
units, work groups and, with the assistance of l’Institut Renault de la Qualité and a Peugeot con-
sultant, we introduced the 5S concepts, the TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) method, and
visual analysis of the problems. But this was difficult because, when the personnel became involved
in productivity related activities, the trade unions saw their power being eroded, so they blocked

94 New Technology, Work and Employment © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

 everything. So there has not been much of a change in productivity. We were nearly closed down
or bought out because the Swiss group, quoted on the Zurich Stock Exchange, wanted all of its fac-
tories to be profitable: that is why they closed down a factory in Germany. In March 2001, they
threatened to close down the factory and it was from that point that autonomous production units
began to work. In October 2000, I gave myself a year to set them up and I was successful, because
the whole factory has been converted to autonomous production units since January 2002.
Autonomous production units are made up of 5 to 12 people, more generally 8, with a team
leader who is a multi-skilled worker without any hierarchical responsibilities, capable of working
at any of the positions in the autonomous production unit and can train any new arrival. He is
given 10% of his time to pass on information to the team leader of the next shift (to the one in the
afternoon shift if he is from the morning shift). The afternoon team leader thus meets with the
morning group leader for 5 or 10 minutes and is informed about the problems encountered, which
is a good way of avoiding problems. The team members together with the team leader keep infor-
mation concerning the unit up to date and discuss the differences between targets and results. Units
are responsible for preventive maintenance; all of the team members are trained to clean the
moulds, keep the tools and machines in good condition; so the maintenance department is only
responsible for breakdowns. Behind the units there is a technical support team with one person
representing methods and another quality. Each unit has its own flexibility chart. The team leaders
do not have a hierarchical position but are ranked with a considerably higher rank coefficient than
the other team members and also have a higher salary. We are the ones who choose them after an
interview, but they have to volunteer. The volunteers are those who have already showed their
ability to communicate and to report during training sessions.
At present, there are no more strikes. I have encouraged other trade unions to join us and the
central delegate from an opposition trade union resigned from his commission to become a team
leader. This union is still the main one, but I do not have any problems any more. Attitudes have
changed.

The examples given for car manufacturers and for suppliers show that how these units
are organised can vary greatly. The number of team members in a unit can vary by as
much as 100 per cent. The person responsible for the team can have a hierarchical posi-
tion, as is the case in both Renault’s and Peugeot’s units where their group leaders are
foremen or even engineers. They can also be multi-skilled workers without any hier-
archical position, simple coordinators, ranked at a level just a little above that of the
team members. Organising factories into production units does not necessarily ques-
tion Taylorism. There is a big difference between what management wants and what
is pragmatic. Multitasking is often limited to unit positions because workers are
assigned to a particular unit on a long-term basis, but not everyone is necessarily suit-
able for all of the positions. Multitasking can be significantly less important than in
the new smaller factories where the staff has been trained to do all the jobs in the
factory (not only in production but also in maintenance, logistics and shipping and
even the workshop supervisor’s job if he is not there) and where everyone has to
change his job every day:
because, if we let them decide among themselves what job they were going to do, they would
quickly become creatures of habits (a director).

In one of the small factories (belonging to a German group that had just been bought
by an American multinational) that we visited during start up and then again in 2002,
production units had only been set up since the recent installation of welding robots,
which is what made people question the original organisation of the factory. The direc-
tor acknowledged that there is less multi-skilled work and that the work is more
Taylorised.
Before, things were organised rather informally. Today there is no communication between the two
units, but there is an improvement in the management of the budget, of the labour force and of
training.

The production worker does not always enjoy great independence because often, the
team leaders are responsible for helping (such as with maintenance and production
management, for example). Within the unit, there may be a formal or an informal hier-
archy with a group leader or a team leader. This form of organisation by product,
which aims to increase both productivity and internal flexibility, transforms the way
work is supervised, and facilitates the setting up of participative management, with

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005 Teamwork in factories 95

meetings taking place regularly within the unit in order to improve results, to find
solutions to daily problems and to submit suggestions.

The production unit, a place of experimentation, in the process of evolving

In factories where autonomous production units have been established, organisation
undergoes change, and often, the unit becomes a place for experimentation. This
organisation can, however, present more disadvantages than advantages, and, in this
case, it may be decided to stop the experiment. This would seem to be the case with
the plastics factory’s reorganisation project, which was well advanced in 1997, as one
autonomous production unit was in operation at the time. But the project was ques-
tioned and abandoned. In this factory (visited again in 2000), the director who had
launched the reorganisation into units explained why the project had been abandoned:
It was a bit heavy, overly complicated. We do not have the structures to keep it going. We are going
to simplify. We never managed to train everyone. We do not have enough trainers in the factory
and we did not complete the training that had originally been planned.
Even if autonomous production units are generalised, which has been the case at
Renault for several years, this form of organisation may evolve.
We are going to experiment working in even smaller units by taking our inspiration from what the
Japanese have been doing i.e. they have five or six multi-skilled production workers who rotate
among themselves because they know all the different tasks so well.
One of the Renault factory directors told us. Since Renault has had a share in Nissan’s
capital, they have adopted ideas from them as to how to increase productivity. That
is why the Renault group decided, in 1999, to imitate Nissan by setting up work units
of four to six people, by breaking up the larger autonomous production unit and ex-
perimenting with this unit organisation everywhere in the group.
In the plastics factory in Normandy presented as an example above where the units
have been generalised since the beginning of 2002, things appear to be changing. The
director is considering appointing professional maintenance personnel to unit team
leader positions.
Consequently, maintenance will be integrated into the unit. I have already done this at Renault. I
told people in the maintenance department: ‘Why don’t you apply for a position as team leader
since you both have the same coefficient?’ If maintenance staff become team leaders, then team
leaders will no longer be looked down on by the maintenance department. To date, I have had no
negative reactions.
There are also plans to move the support set-up for developing new products near the
autonomous production units.
In the Toyota factory, some modifications are also being introduced because car
release speed is being accelerated. At the end of April 2002, a car was supposed to be
finished every 72 seconds, and by the beginning of 2003, every 60 seconds. Because
the number of people varies depending on this, the autonomous production unit
should have more than 10 people:
therefore 2 team leaders are needed per unit instead of 1 because management does not want a
team leader to be responsible for more than 5 or 6 people. (a team leader)
These changes bring about other changes in recruitment practices, training and pro-
duction worker assessment. Management expectations are also becoming increasingly
demanding; ‘a situation which might lead to the exclusion of some people’, added a
director we met in April 2002.

Consequences of the organisation of autonomous production units

on management of the labour force
The establishment of autonomous production units has important consequences on
work structures: the elimination of indirect jobs i.e. those that do not directly partici-

96 New Technology, Work and Employment © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

pate in production, and a shortening of the line of command, because often an echelon
or grade is eliminated altogether—that of the foreman most frequently or else the
workshop supervisor. It promotes the creation of new jobs in production that have
loosely defined limits. It also has an effect on recruitment techniques, because organ-
isation into units has a tendency to make recruitment procedures for production
workers more selective, and on professional relationships, for these new groups can
compete directly with the trade unions.

The appearance of new and loosely defined production jobs

Reorganisation into autonomous production units accelerates a movement which can
be found in nearly all the companies studied i.e. the reduction of the number of jobs
‘ancillary’ to production (in quality, in production management and often in main-
tenance) as well as in the number of supervisory staff positions that are gradually
being replaced by production jobs. This decrease may be a result of downsizing (retire-
ment, redundancy, dismissal, early retirement or resignation), but it may also be a
consequence of workers returning to production jobs. Former foremen, for example,
have to take on production jobs and work the same as any other production worker
without having a hierarchical role—just the role of team leader—when there is a re-
organisation into autonomous production units.
The biggest organisational changes and, in particular, the establishment of
autonomous production units, are partly why loosely defined jobs are created that are
little recognised and yet replace other job positions which are perceived as being quali-
fied and better paid. This is how ‘machine pilots’, ‘team leaders’, ‘unit coordinators’
etc., have the dual role of working in production and of providing the support given
by tools fitters or foremen in the past but phased out by the new jobs. They do not
have a hierarchical role and work shifts as if they were production line workers. Train-
ing for these new professions may take a long time and may be reserved for young
people holding a diploma or for those with on-the-job training in the company. Their
emergence shows that increasingly technical jobs must be at the service of production
operations. The first consequence is that the departments of quality, maintenance, pro-
duction management and methods were moved to the workshop under the responsi-
bility of the workshop supervisor or the production director. What they are called—the
responsibilities and the classification of these new jobs—vary from one company to
another, very similar to production workers in most of the factories, comparable to
technicians in others. The emergence of these new professions confuses the bound-
aries between professional categories, and the objectives of hierarchical changes and
the systems of monitoring work within the context of participative management are
called into question.
It is possible for a production worker to become ‘really multi-tasked’ by becoming
production unit coordinator. His responsibility will be that formerly given to super-
visors—to make sure his unit is working well and to serve as a link between the pro-
duction workers and the upper hierarchy. ‘He’s an expert’, but in spite of this, he does
not have a hierarchical role. He remains a worker ranking just a little higher than a
production worker, yet inferior to a foreman in a Taylorised organisation.

More selective recruitment

Staff turnover is linked to the reorganisation of production and work which encour-
age a renewal of the workforce in order to rejuvenate it and to increase skills. In this
context of change, firms consolidate their technical management staff by recruiting
engineers on a national level and hiring technicians locally. This recruitment concerns
very specific jobs aimed at reinforcing existing job positions or filling new positions
for the firm. Nearly all production worker positions are filled by people who have
begun as temporary workers. New jobs linked to organisational transformations, par-
ticularly the creation of autonomous production units, are filled by recruiting young
graduates from professional school programs (maintenance DUT, electromechanical

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005 Teamwork in factories 97

BTS for example). The organisation into units may have consequences on recruitment
of all operators by turning, for example, a diploma into a discriminating criteria, said
one interviewee:

we are working with autonomous production units which are considered as small independent
companies that require versatility, multiple skills, and general knowledge to hold down the
position; my argument is that a diploma = a certain level of general knowledge, but I am talking
about a diploma related to our field, and, if possible, a diploma in the maintenance of automatic
mechanical systems.

In most of the factories where autonomous production units are being developed, the
ultimate goal would be to make the units responsible for their own verifications, main-
tenance, logistics and scheduling. They would take responsibility for the product from
the customer’s order to delivery. They would be like mini companies within the
factory. Planning for this evolution may require a change in recruitment practices
so that only workers with at least a baccalauréat would be considered for long-term
contracts.
In all the factories, interviewees indicated that even if qualification requirements for
production workers were below the baccalauréat, it would also be necessary to recruit
some operators with at least that level, as they would be the only ones really fit for
promotion. The organisation into units, or even plans to set up such units, plays a role
in speeding up change. All new coordinator jobs created (which hold different names,
depending on the factory), will only be filled by operators having at least the bac-
calauréat, or even two years’ additional study afterwards, because of the shortening
line of responsibility in the hierarchy between the basic production worker and his
immediate superior:

A balance must be struck between those people with ability to change and those who stay
unchanged or who only evolve a little,

said one of the interviewees. It seems that this way, young assembly production
workers recruited for long-term contracts, with only a vocational training certificate
(CAP) or a professional studies certificate (BEP), would now have little prospect of
getting more qualified positions whereas in the past ‘a production worker could be
promoted right up to tool-fitter or foreman’.
A whole battery of evaluation tests for the recruitment of production workers for
long-term contracts has recently come into general use in automobile industry fac-
tories. This must also be because of organisational change, particularly the setting up
of autonomous production units. These tests try to measure the candidate’s potential,
their ability to work in a team at the workplace and their ability to change. They rein-
force the selective aspect of recruitment; all the diploma does is to act as an indicator
of their potential allowing the candidate to apply for the job, take the tests and be
interviewed. Organisation into autonomous production units has a tendency to make
selection criteria tougher when recruiting temporary workers. Temporary workers are
frequently used in production in automobile industry factories in a way inherent in
the car industry both as extra help, because the number of permanent staff is calcu-
lated very carefully, and as a pool of potential candidates. If a long-term contract is
under consideration, the latter will still need to undergo a series of tests before being
able to be fully and definitively assimilated, even if they have spent several years
working in the factory as temporary employees. Car manufacturers and their suppliers
generally give temporary employment agencies the profile of the ideal employee
and then delegate selection, having already checked the viability of their battery of
tests which is specific to each company. In some cases, the temporary agency’s selec-
tion is inadequate, and applicants may be sorted out by the company actually doing
the hiring, using supplementary tests before offering them a temporary job in the
factory. The selection of temporary workers may also be done by the factory that is
hiring, with the assistance of an employment agency. Diplomas may be required,
however, by the temporary employment agency.

98 New Technology, Work and Employment © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

 Changes in professional relationships

In the automobile industry, factories belonging to very large groups coexist with small
or medium-size companies. Professional relationships show features that can fre-
quently be found in the French industry i.e. trade unions are almost non-existent in
smaller companies; and although well established in factories belonging to large com-
panies, union officials are not recognised by companies as being fully representative
for negotiations. ‘In Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, the social relations are rooted
in a long tradition of working together. France is the exception.’ writes Anne-Marie
Grozelier (1998) who explains this specificity by ‘the very conflictual experiences that
have punctuated its history’. Grozelier adds, ‘the trade-unions, weakened by the eco-
nomic crisis and further destabilised by changes in the productive system, are on the
defensive, and the balance of power has been somewhat reversed. Room for discus-
sion is more often than not imposed by the company management which puts forward
an external rationality and thus avoid the blame . . .’. In the automobile industry, the
growing externalisation of car manufacturers’ activities and the fragmentation of pro-
duction facilities have divided up collective groups and have made it difficult to have
effective confrontation over working conditions or salaries. Conflicts or strikes provide
the means of pressure, but the results obtained are often lower than expected. Differ-
ent kinds of individual resistance—e.g. absenteeism, resignation, purposely stopping
work—all of which show that the workers are dissatisfied and that the social climate
has deteriorated, may be explained by the lack of real exchange or dialogue.
In some of the regions we studied—in the north and the Franche-Comté (in the east
of France), trade union traditions are nevertheless still strong. This is particularly true
in certain employment areas that are either heavily urbanised or significantly affected
by the setting up of one or more large companies where trade unions are traditionally
present and have had serious conflict in the past; for example, Douai, where Renault
is established, and Sochaux-Montbéliard, because of the weight of Peugeot. The CGT
and/or the CFDT trade unions obtained the majority, right from the first elections,
inside nearly all the new automobile component factories set up since 1994 in the
industrial zone seven kilometres from the Sochaux factory, and therefore conflict broke
out very quickly (strikes or work stoppage). It is the same for new factories established
near Douai. The proximity of the client company and the features of these areas have
certainly encouraged the development of trade unions. This contrasts sharply with
new factories built in the country in Normandy and Brittany, which have been without
trade unions for several years (Gorgeu and Mathieu, 1995).
‘Trade unions become unnecessary when there are opportunities for participative
management’, said consultants. This was frequently heard by company management
within the automobile industry, who, for the most part, were trying to ensure that job
applicants would toe the line. They did not want to hire applicants likely to protest or
keep making demands. Management often tries to establish co-operative relations
with staff, so that trade unions that do make too many demands are usually isolated.
The term ‘cooperative relations’ may signify acceptance of a genuine opposition
force, which seems to be the case in a few factories; however, it may conceal authority
and provide a ‘sliding away from conflictual negotiation to a more co-operative
model’ which ‘has as an effect of transforming the law set up this way into a system
of flexible rules which are negotiated with the mutual agreement of the worker and
management’ (Gavini, 1997). Co-operation is particularly sought after in manufactur-
ing factories where management tries to avoid conflict by meeting frequently with staff
representatives and trade union delegates; personnel directors of these factories can
maintain relatively balanced relationships with all the trade unions or create alliances
with those unions considered as ‘partners’ in order to isolate those they deem do make
too many claims—even if they are in the majority. The election of staff delegates and
members of the Works Committee is always considered to be an important event. The
participative management type of relationship predominates with suppliers. Pugna-
cious unions are rarely accepted. The development of participative management in the
automobile industry and the organisation of autonomous production units has a ten-

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005 Teamwork in factories 99

dency to jeopardise joint regulation (Reynaud and Reynaud, 1994) i.e. the confronta-
tional relationship between management and trade unions culminating in real com-
promises. Setting up autonomous production units may be the means of undermining
the opposition force of the unions. The personnel director of a car manufacturing
factory considered that staff representatives no longer had a place in an organisation
with autonomous production units, ‘since all of the problems are resolved within the
unit’. In one of the above mentioned examples, at a supplier’s, the organisation of
autonomous production units is aimed at increasing productivity, and therefore at
weakening union protests. The means used by management was to promote a very
pugnacious trade union delegate to the job of team leader. This led the delegate to give
up his union responsibilities in order to devote himself to his new job. The organisa-
tion of Just in Time delivery encourages management to negotiate quickly to avoid
stoppages, which are sometimes spontaneous, so that they do not turn into strikes.
What is at stake is important enough for the car manufacturer to intervene himself
when an important conflict is started at a supplier’s, as happened in a new factory in
the Sochaux-Montbéliard area.
Even in an organisation with units, stoppages and even strikes may break out. That
is how in the latter case, the factory where the newly hired are often hired as team
leader, holding nearly the same rank coefficient and the same salary as the other
workers. These team leaders can participate in stoppages decided by other workers.
Things move with team leaders because they want to change and can’t see any possibilities for fur-
thering their career. Last night we stopped work, the machines stopped for an hour because we
were feeling stressed on account of an unpleasant new group leader, so the team leaders followed
the movement,

a union delegate told us.

Conclusion
It is only recently that autonomous production units in the French car industry have
emerged. Their introduction is aimed at reducing costs, increasing quality and short-
ening delivery deadlines. The units were set up and became widespread among the
two car manufacturers in the 1990s, first of all at Renault and later at Peugeot. Fol-
lowing their example, the suppliers introduced the units very gradually as an exper-
iment in a workshop or a new factory before generalising the concept. Before this kind
of organisation can be introduced, there has to be a change in the attitude of the work-
force after decades of Taylorism. Executive turnover in this industry, the use of man-
agement consultants and local networks enabled the standardisation of organisational
methods for production and work linked to the just in time system. These methods
have been the necessary vectors of change and have facilitated the introduction of
units. The autonomous production unit concept has been implemented in the French
car industry in different ways—depending on the firm. In fact, the size of the units
and the responsibilities given to the operator vary considerably from one factory to
another. Pragmatism and restructuring enable this concept to evolve, and this process
can even lead some suppliers to question the organisation in units a few years after it
has been set up. The introduction of autonomous production units encourages the
creation of new jobs in the production process—jobs that replace those held by pro-
duction assistants who were highly qualified and recognised in collective conventions.
These new and ill-defined jobs, which have often emerged without preliminary con-
sultation with the trade unions, require productive, good all-round, multi-skilled staff.
These jobs are undergoing change and call for skills that are constantly being scruti-
nised, yet are not recognised in the official classifications. The introduction of units
makes the recruitment process for operators more selective. The tendency is to use
more and more numerous and complex tests, which are intended to assess general
knowledge, the ability to work in a group and the capacity for change. It encourages
long-lasting temporary work, which is a means of putting a candidate to the test and
of honing the recruiting agents’ judgement. Generally speaking, participative man-

100 New Technology, Work and Employment © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005
agement is introduced into the unit, and all conflict has to be settled within it, which
tends to weaken the power of the trade unions and eliminate protesters. The intro-
duction of autonomous production units may thus contribute to the isolation or even
the disappearance of the trade unions’ power of opposition. In a just in time organi-
sation, as in the car industry, teamwork in a unit does not eliminate routine work, but
increases the workload, for the workforce is calculated at a strict minimum, and
encourages an acceleration of the pace of work.

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