ABSTRACT
The overall effect of automation has been to increase greatly the optimum level of production, primarily by making possible an extraordinary speeding up of machinery and pressing operations. Any company producing below the technical optimum must necessarily be at some cost disadvantage as compared to its larger competitors if the products are roughly similar. The optimum has been rising with the growth of the industry, and will in all probability, be higher in ten or twenty years than it is now. The survival of so many foundries is in itself a strong indication that economies of scale are not important beyond relatively low volumes. As productive methods change so, may the extent of economies of large-scale production. No firm would consider a major expansion in terms of its existing techniques and equipment, although there would be exceptions for some processes and for particular machines.
