ABSTRACT
Few inventions have transformed the planet as profoundly as the automobile. The challenge facing GM, Ford, and Chrysler in the 1980s was truly enormous. Their product quality was exposed as inferior and their costs far out of line. Automation played much the same role in both the United States and Japan. The sole exception appeared to be the process for changing dies in sheet metal stamping presses in order to make different parts. The US auto industry argued that the shift of demand toward smaller, fuel-efficient cars had simply developed too rapidly and caught them by surprise. The entire Japanese auto industry produced only 165,000 passenger cars in 1960. By 1980, however, production had exploded to over 7 million, with 56 percent for export and nearly half of that going to the United States. As the auto industry enters the new century, it is already encountering new forces for change.
