When lean production hits the wall: changing conditions of profitability for the European automotive industry

For the automotive industry, the last decade was synonym of growing challenges of all kinds. From hardening normative frameworks regarding pollution to technological innovation (industry 4.0, digitization, electrification) as well as structural shifts in demand for new (and used) cars. Of course, not all firms where confronted in the same way to these challenges. Still, our main hypothesis is that these challenges became so important that lean production reached its limits and won’t be able to sustain profitability in a sufficient way without a sharp reduction of labor costs and a deep internal reorganization of capital itself.
Our contribution should be seen as a « working paper in progress ». It will collect data about the market and profitability and present some first interpretative analysis about the ongoing transformations of the automotive industry in order to put challenges for labor in perspective.