Legacy of fordism and product life cycle management in the modern economy

Abstract

The industrial revolution taking place since the 18th century has brought the global economies to the stage of mass production, mass industrialization and spreading ideas connected with its efficiency. The most famous of its kind is Fordism and its modern variations called Post-Fordism or Neo-Fordism. We can still see traditional way of producing things in some parts of the world, and the leading economies are using Ford's ideas or the modifications of the Ford's concepts. But there is a question about the place of these models in the modern economy, especially because mass-production causes mass-waste and modern societies has woken up to the reality of the global pollution, climate change or just the simple fact that the amount of the raw materials is limited. The social mood is slowly changing so there should be a change to the way we produce and consume things as well. There is a question: can we proceed within existing models or should we think outside the box so we can invent more suitable way of looking at efficiency and effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about the future of how are we going to produce things. It is based on the literature review considering Fordism and its variations, Product Life Cycle facing issues like pollution, massive waste and changes in modern economy, as well as on the case study of implementing waste reduction activities in the product' design phase in the industrial plant based in one of the EU countries - Poland.