ABSTRACT
By the 1980s at the latest, the crisis of Tayloristic, bureaucratically organized mass production was obvious. In the highly industrialized societies of the Western world, the production of standardized industrial products at competitive prices was no longer viable. The comparative advantages these countries had enjoyed, primarily the competence and capital required for organizing mass production, had declined or lost their significance. This raises the question as to the remaining locational advantages: what products or services can still be profitably manufactured or rendered, given the labour costs in western Europe?
