tomcoughlan.com – Structured for Factories of the Mind: “Structured for Factories of the Mind
Written by Tom Coughlan
Monday, 13 March 2006
(This story appears in the Spring 2006 edition of StamfordPlus Magazine)
In the first half of the 2O th century Stamford’s economy and its economic leaders were focused developing the city’s manufacturing parlous. The “Who’s -Who” of Stamford business in those days included names like Atlas Powder, Schick Shavers, American Cyanamid, Electric Specialty, Pitney Bowes, and Yale & Towne. There was even a time when “The City That Works!” was known as “The Lock City” due to the dominance that the Yale & Towne lock company had on the local economy.
In those day, Stamford was a blue collar city. The management of the workforce and workforce development was very different then it is today. Manufacturing is a transactional business, meaning that things are done in almost a cookbook like fashion. There is a prescribed recipe, or manufacturing process, and work must fit into this recipe. Manufacturing managers are schooled in the theories of the business icons like Fredric W. Taylor and the concepts of Scientific Management. These are top down environments and there is little room for the creativity or intellectual contribu”
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