Greater Use of Automation in Industry Urged

American manufacturers need to install more automated machinery or lose jobs and sales to efficient foreign competitors who share technology with their peers, according to a Harvard University study released Thursday.

The survey of more than 1,300 U.S. metalworking plants concluded that American industry is clinging to an outdated notion that big firms should not share technological advances with potential competitors.

“Relations between large and small firms is not part of the business culture in the United States,” said Maryellen R. Kelley, an assistant management professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and one of the study’s authors.

“That kind of boost to small manufacturers that encourages them to automate is absent,” she said.

A Loss of Jobs

The study found that more than half of U.S. metalworking plants have not installed any computer-controlled machinery and just one in 10 plants planned to invest in computerization in 1988-89.

“In the long run, if small manufacturers in particular don’t modernize, they will no longer be able to compete . . . with more sophisticated foreign suppliers,” Kelley said. “That could ultimately lead to a loss of jobs.”

The study found that just 11% of machine tools used in the American metalworking industry are computer-controlled. Kelley said a similar 1985 study of Japanese firms found that 30% of the total stock was computer-run.

“The model of the self-interested, do-it-alone small business driven by a gear of cutthroat competition . . . seems to be a peculiarly American phenomenon,” the report issued by the Center for Business and Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government said.

The authors said America’s competitive culture “must change if U.S. industry is to continue to be an industrial power in the world economy.” In countries such as Japan and Italy, potential competitors as well as buyers and suppliers routinely share information, they said.

Equal Distribution

The survey of metalworking and machinery manufacturers in 21 durable goods industries, including hardware, plumbing and forging, was based on a national mail questionnaire and interviews with more than 1,300 firms nationwide.