Coping with chaos: designing the organisation for Factory 2000

This project aimed to examine in detail the transitions that companies experience in moving from stand-alone applications to integrated systems. In particular, the research sought to establish guidelines for organisation development strategies in support of integrated manufacturing technology. The project examined over 50 successful applications of integrated technology, using over 20 metrics of organisational design, and concluded that the broad changes that were occurring in manufacturing were best thought of as new and emerging paradigm of manufacturing organisation. The key design dimension of coordination was shown to be manifesting a shift from an emphasis on extrinsic to intrinsic mechanisms. This paper focuses on the main theoretical and conceptual issues raised by the research and highlights the key parameters for organisational design