“DOWN with the deadly rhythm of the production line,” proclaimed the revolutionary posters in Paris in 1968. In reality, those French demonstrators had less to complain about than they thought, because when you look closely industrial production lines often do not have much rhythm at all.
In fact, the whole notion that automated assembly lines are relentlessly efficient is a fallacy. It can be mind-bogglingly hard to coordinate the flows of products through several processing steps, or to deliver a multiplicity of components exactly when and where they are needed. A small glitch in one part of the system can…
