Globalization in the Making
Neil Cossons describes how factory methods gave rise to a worldwide marketplace.
Manufacturing – the ‘industrial revolution’ that is some 300 years old – largely replaced the tradition where goods were made in low volumes by craftsmen, often to the customer’s personal specification. In its earliest phases, industrialization implied the organization of labour. The accompanying increases in volume, and the more predictable flow of products from the workshops, led to markets based upon certainty – of quality, delivery and price. In the twentieth century systematic cost reduction secured by the meticulous aggregation of organizational and technological benefits created further new markets, although initially at the sacrifice of some choice: ‘any colour so long as it’s black’.
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