Prais’ researchers were able to observe that these differences in productivity
were all related to a distinct and superior ability for the German firms to manage
operations. This ability was in its turn directly attributed to the superior
quality and quantity of technical skills available in the German and other continental
countries’ plant. Examples of the connection between poor operations
management and the availability of skills show precisely what it is about skills
that proves valuable on the shop floor.
So a common source of low productivity in Britain was a greater frequency
of breakdown of production machinery, even when this equipment was no
older than in any other country. On their physical visits to English plant, Prais’
researchers were able to observe and to measure the higher frequency of breakdowns;
for example, emergency downtime of equipment was 10% of planned
British biscuit production time, compared with an average of 3–4% in comparable
continental plant – this, despite the more complex production processes
in the continental plant (Prais 1995: 62). One explanation was that:
Almost all continental plants carried out routine programmes of preventive
maintenance – hardly any British did so; the consequences were apparent in
the significantly lower rates of emergency breakdown [in the continental
plant]. (Prais 1995: 71)
The inability to maintain machinery was symptomatic of a general British
inability to ‘manage’ artefacts. This was so even for such an apparently mundane
matter as equipment layout in hotels; furniture and washing facilities weremore often built flush with the floor to enable easy cleaning on the continent
(Prais 1995: 65).
Interviews with machinery suppliers confirmed
that teething and subsequent heavy maintenance problems were significantly
more prevalent among British than Continental users; British fitters’
capabilities were sometimes so low that serious ‘teething’ problems had
arisen simply because installation instructions had not been correctly followed.
(Prais 1995: 64)
It is important that the British problem is hardly likely to be one of a lack of
formal knowledge of best practice in these matters; rather, the firms were simply
unable to deploy such practices. This view is supported by Prais’ evidence that
British management sought to accommodate their acknowledged weaknesses in
operations. For example, British firms recognised their weak in-house ability to
manage sophisticated machine models such as CNC machines. They accommodated
this weakness by tending to buy simpler machine models and delaying
purchase until they were sure suppliers had dealt with all the ‘bugs’ associated
with advanced models.
Of distinct significance, superior German operational capabilities enabled a
strategic response to strong international competition that was denied many
British firms. For example, in clothing, German firms had shifted to short
production runs of 150–300 high-value items that required, for instance, more
complex stitching operations. This enabled them to quickly follow changes in
high-value-added fashion items in their home market – changes that lower cost,
but which distant overseas competitors found difficult to follow. In contrast,
British firms relied on longer production runs (of the order of 15 000 items) for
simpler products, with less stitching, tucking and fashion variations. This left
them exposed to the developing country, low-cost operators that used the same
operational practices.
The frequent changes in German textile design relied on operators being able
to read directly from sketches; the British operators more often relied on physical
demonstration by supervisors. The limited abilities of British operators were
thereby implicated in the ‘strategy’ of long production runs. Despite the lower
demands that long production runs should make on supervisory overhead,
overall British clothing firms employed 2.5 times more supervisors and checkers
than the German plants, to correct a higher rate of error (Prais 1995: 69).
As in the US–Japanese shop-floor comparisons, here we find the contrast is
between more managers, higher costs and lower quality on the British side and
fewer managers, lower costs and higher quality production on the German side.
Hotels provided a demonstration of the importance of another basic operations
function:
Efficient work scheduling, we judged, was probably the single most important
element in raising workforce productivity in German hotels. (Prais 1995: 72)
German hotel ‘housekeepers’, the equivalent to the shop-floor supervisor or
foreman, spent more time onwork-scheduling, stock control, purchasing, organising external services
(laundry) and selecting labour saving equipment. (Prais 1995: 72)
In all, 75% of German housekeepers were qualified, but none of the British
sample had attended any external exam (Prais 1995: 71). The result was to force
a higher level of British manager to undertake these supervisory duties, but less
effectively, and in turn this weakened the higher level managers’ ability to
plan long term for such matters as marketing campaigns and the purchase of
computerised booking and invoice management tools (Prais 1995: 72).
In all these comparative studies, weak British management of operations was
clearly associated with low concentrations of skilled workers, but especially, as
in the example of hotels, of workplace supervisors. The poor qualification of the
supervisor was perhaps the greatest weakness of British operations management;
in British metalworking 85% of production foremen had been promoted
without any qualifications, but in German metalworking 80% of foremen had
attained the relevant Meister management qualification (Prais 1995: 71).
In Britain, as in Germany, workers were promoted from the shop floor to supervisor
positions and there is no doubt that in both cases they were somehow
‘experienced’ in their work. The difference is in the structure and content of
this ‘experience’. Prais’ articulation of the practical difference between the
British and German supervisors is worth emphasising:
Someone who has followed a purely on-the-job route to learning a trade may
be as competent in carrying out specified routine maintenance tasks as
someone who has also attended college courses on theoretical aspects and
passed written exams. But, in the modern more technically complex world,
it seems he or she is less likely to be competent in knowing – sufficiently
precisely and sufficiently quickly – what may have gone wrong, or is likely
to go wrong, which the best way of putting it right and be able to do so in a
way that ensures it will not soon go wrong again. (Prais 1995: 70)
In Prais’ analysis, it is the weak British system of vocational training that
explains the differences in operational performance between German and
British firms.
It is not only Prais’ research that draws this conclusion. An independent
series of German–French matched workplace studies drew broadly the kind
of conclusions as Prais’ team – that the German vocational training system
supports superior workplace organisation and performance. For example, comparisons
of efforts to implement computer-integrated technologies found the
French to be the less able (Lutz and Veltz 1992: 274). In general, Lutz found that
French companies had more hierarchical levels, fewer shop-floor workers as a
percentage of office workers and wider wage differentials between hierarchical
levels. Management and supervisory functions in these French companies took
20% of wages and salaries compared with only 12% in comparable German
companies (Lutz 1992: 261). Searching for an explanation of these differences,
Lutz argued that the French employment system had adapted to the graded,
hierarchical and highly academic output of the French educational system by
providing an equally graded occupational structure matching the hierarchy ofstatus that the exam system generates. Although France reformed vocational
training from the 1980s, this result is consistent with Prais in its resort to the
structure of the dominant educational institutions to explain otherwise inexplicable
features of workplace organisation.
The matched plant research offers compelling evidence of persistent international
differences in the quality of operations management associated with
systematic differences in the availability of technically competent people at
worker, skilled worker and supervisory levels. On the basis of this association
we are asked to believe that deficiencies in vocational training are the cause of
the poor management of operations.
I find the kind of examples cited above sufficient to accept that the nature and
extent of vocational training has a strong influence on the options for managing
operations on the shop floor.16 However, it is obvious that simply because of the
focus and detail of these studies, other features of the ‘enterprise environment’
are not considered. So, for example, different times of entry into the European
Common Market might have left German and British plants with different experiences
of opportunities for expansion, and therefore with different motivations
towards the rationalisation of shop floor operations; conditions of access to
finance might differ in the two countries in ways that alter the management of
the enterprise long term. So the Prais argument is one of plausible causation,
conditioned by the knowledge that other institutional features of the enterprise
environment may also matter.
Changes in operations practice are plausibly outside management control in
those countries with weak national vocational training institutions and if we
wanted to close the gap in operations performance the obvious policy response
would be to develop institutions of vocational training. Before this option is
considered it makes sense first to understand how and why vocational training
developed so differently in these Euro