Jumping the Gun.

Unfortunately I think you are confusing "highly skilled" with
knowledgable.

Consider the cases you gave:
A steel worker using heavy equipment should in theory be able to take
that skill to other industries which use said equipment. Driving a
truck for a steel mill is the same a driving a truck for a brewery.
For eaxmple. This is what is defined in economics as a 'portable
skill'. No consider the skill of understanding the statistical quality
control procedure. This is not a portable skill. It varies from
company to company and industry to industry. Quality control in steel
manufacturing requires chemical procedures, while quality control in
software development requires understanding of a computer language.

Also I would like to point out (because I work with steel companies
and know much about them) that the shovel had been replaced by
mechanization early in the 19th century. ;-)

>
> > Many of the manufacturing workers require very little knowledge of
> > what, they are producing.
>
> You mean like the steelworkers who control the minimills and each
> worker today has the productivity of 100 men from 1900. The
> steelworkers from a century ago did backbreaking work shoveling coal
> into furnaces. Then they had to learn how to operate heavy equipment
> in order to move larger quantities of raw materials. Today, the
> front line steel worker may be sitting at a computer console and
> have to understand statistical quality control procedures, and the
> basic chemistry of steel making so that they can understand what is
> going on and make decisions if something goes wrong.

Again the secretay skills is a set of portable skills that can be
transfered to other offices. She can't be dropped into a stock
brokerage firm and told to do analysis reports for a particular
industry, although she has all the skills (spreadsheet, database,
etc..) required to do the job. She has the skill set but not the
knowledge to do the job.

>
> How about the secretary of days of old. She had to know how to use a
> typewriter, perform shorthand, and file. Today she has to know how
> to use a computer, understand all of the formating processes buried
> within the programs, understand how to use spreadsheet, database,
> presentation, and a myriad of other programs.
>

Farming is also an interesting situation. It in many way has benefited
the least from specialization. I can specifically speak about this. My
father is a farmer, and many friends of his are as well. These people
know nothing about you are talking about. What they know is what the
vet told them to do with the drug. They go by calendars and procedures
that are created by government scientist relating to soil chemistry,
fertilizer toxicity, etc...

Strangely you or I probably know more about why farmers have to do
specific things and procedures than they do.

> How about the farmer who doesn't have to rely on horses any longer.
> Now they have to understand how to operate different pieces of
> mechanized equipment and they have to be aware of pharmacology as
> they drug and monitor their livestock. They have to be aware of soil
> chemistry, fertilizer toxicity, and optimum crop rotation and
> balancing in order to manage their land more efficiently.
>
> There are many job functions that have grown more complex because of
> the need to master technology. The jobs that really do require
> nothing more than muscle are simply not cost-competitive in the
> first world.

Yes, most procedures today are much more complex, but it is the
mechanical, industrial, chemical engineers that create the procedure
that hides the complexity. Most workers today are highly skilled at
one or a few tasks that may or may not be portable between companies
or industries depending on the task. Many of the people doing the
tasks don't know the principles or the rational of what or why they
are doing it.

>
> > Many manufacturing facilities (example heat treatment plants,
> > stamping plants, plastic molding, etc) the worker doing the work
> > doesn't even know what the final product is today.
>
> They don't have to know what they are making. What they have to know
> to do their job efficiently is how to operate the equipment.

>
> > In another example, previous to Ford purchasing Austin Martin,
> > Austin Martin workers built every car by hand. After purchase, Ford
> > introduced Assemply line methods, and the quality of the product
> > went up. By decreasing the knowledge requirements of the workers,
> > and introducing workflow that isolated the worker from knowing too
> > much, they produced better products.
>
> You're confusing craftsmen, or tradespeople, with manufacturing.
> Your anology suffers because the skill and knowledge sets are not
> directly comparable. The trade-off is not one of knowledge for less
> knowledge, as you assert, but the knowledge used by a craftsman is
> replaced by the knowledge used by a technician who controls
> machinary.

The skill sets are not directly comparable. The knowledge set is. Many
people that work for Ford or GM on the assembly line couldn't build a
car. A garage mechanic may not have the skills to operate all of the
specialized equipment on the line but does have the knowledge to build
a car. The assembly line worker has traded the general knowledge, for
the specific skills required to run the machinery.

Both people are in the automotive industry but the mechanics knowledge
is much broader and is closer to the engineers that designed the cars.
(A few of the mechanics I know do have engineering degrees by the way.)

>
> > In fact it is the condition that
> > Drucker was talking about. Small scale production of multiple items
> > where no one can really specialize on anything and specialization
> > is not a desirable thing.
> >
> > Bill
>
> Either you've never read Drucker of you're mischaracterizing some
> point of his so that I have absolutely no idea what you're actually
> referring to. Can you provide a reference to your assertion that
> Drucker said that specialization is not a desirable thing.
>

I have never read the book. I was simply reiterating what was said
about the book.

Bill