Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 8, Number 1, pp. 167-188
© 1999 Oxford University Press
Skills, shop-floor participation and the transformation of Brimfield Precision: lessons for the revitalization of the metal-working sector
a Center for Industrial Competitiveness, Department of Regional Economic and Social Development, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 61 Wilder Street, Lowell, MA 01854, USA
b Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA, USA. E-mail: rforrant@external.umass.edu
Abstract
There is a need for an accumulation of in-depth case studies on successful industrial restructuring in a variety of national and regional contexts and across several industries to extend our understanding of how enterprises successfully develop their dynamic capabilities. While there are studies and reports documenting the recent failures of the US machine tool and metal-working industry, there are few considerations of successful turn-arounds. This article is one such case study and it is part of an ongoing and highly detailed analysis of the extensive metal-working industry in western Massachusetts. Here we analyze the transformation of Brimfield Precision, Inc. from a typical machine shop dependent on a handful of customers and price-based contracts, to one that thrives on the design and manufacture of a range of surgical instruments. The reorganiziation is placed in the context of the more general decline of the US machine tool and metal-working industry after World War II to offer a working model for how the industry may 'remake itself'.