Global Production and the Future of Work: Past, Present, and Futures of Just-in-Time

Current global production is driven by an on-demand market imperative. In textiles, automotives, and electronics to mention just several key industries, the general trend is time-based competition propelled by a shortening of product life cycle and price erosion. However, despite this key relevance of time, so far global production has predominantly been investigated from the spatial perspective. A temporal approach, this chapter argues, is pivotal in order to make visible diverse ways in which capital deploys time to reorganise, expand, and segment labour along gender and ethnic lines in order to “assemble” a workforce best suited for the temporalities of global production.
To foreground such temporal approach, the chapter deploys the notion of just-in-time (JIT) as a key analytical perspective to outline past, present, and future modalities of global production. Each of these temporalities (past, present, future) will be illustrated through a short case study. Consequently, the chapter firstly engages Japan in the 1960s and the Toyota Production Systems (TPSs) typified by JIT and zero-inventory. Secondly, the chapter discusses the adaptation of JIT in the electronics manufacturing since early 2000 in China and Central and Eastern Europe, and shows the way in which the application of JIT model prompted recruitment and labour control practices that attempt to synchronise the supply and assembly of labour to JIT manufacturing. Finally, the chapter discusses how JIT principles informed the transition from analogue to digital capitalism, via a case of data annotation for machine learning (ML)/AI models in China.