ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a social science contribution to the design of a new high-speed canning plant. "Foods Ltd" was a subsidiary of a large multi-national organization engaged in processing and packaging food products. It had three factory sites. One of these (site X), in the north of England, was becoming uneconomic to run and had begun to make a loss. It was decided to build a new high-speed canning plant at one of the other two sites (site Y) thirty miles away. Industrial relations in the company were very tough and adversarial. At a first meeting, the technical director of Foods expressed a strong wish and value that jobs in the new cannery should be rewarding and satisfying, so that the people there should be happy and that industrial relations, in turn, should become more positive. To help the learning process, the representatives asked for some job design work in the existing plant.
