The period after Fordism has been termed Post-Fordist . Fordism as a Return on assets (ROA) broke down, dependent on national experiences, somewhere between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s. Western economies experienced slow or nil economic growth, rising inflation and growing unemployment. The economies of western countries had shifted away from manufacturing and industry and towards service and the knowledge economy. Meanwhile, industry has moved from the west to second- and third-world countries, where production is cheaper. Most employees in the Fordist structure were able to purchase the product they produced. Indeed post-Fordism has arisen in part due to the increasing interconnectedness of the world.[citation needed] The movement of capital has become more fluid, and nation-states have withdrawn significantly from the economic sphere. Post-Fordism has arisen in part due to the increasing interconnectedness of the world. The movement of capital has become more fluid. In Ford's time, laborers were relatively unskilled, but they could form unions, and these labor unions became very strong because capital was not so fluid.
Post-Fordism can be characterized by the several attributes:
• New information technologies.
• Emphasis on types of consumers in contrast to previous emphasis on social class.
• The rise of the service and the white-collar worker.
•' The feminization of the work force.
• The globalization of financial markets.
Instead of producing generic goods, firms now found it more profitable to produce diverse product lines targeted at different groups of consumers, appealing to their sense of taste and fashion. Instead of investing huge amounts of money on the mass production of a single product, firms now needed to build intelligent systems of labor and machines that were flexible and could quickly respond to the whims of the market. Modern just in time manufacturing is one example of a flexible approach to production.
Post Fordism is very much driven by information technology. Advancement in computer technologies allows for just-in -time manufacturing. There is no longer a need for mass production of the same item or a need to stock-up on a given product. Products are made and they are out the door. The key to production flexibility lies in the use of informational technologies in machines and operations. These permit more sophisticated control over the production process. With increasing sophistication of automated processes and, especially, the new flexibility of electronically controlled technology, far-reaching changes in the process of production need not necessarily be associated with increased scale of production. Indeed, on of the major results of the new electronic and computer-aided production technology is that it permits rapid switching from one part of a process to another and allows - at least potentially- the tailoring of production to the requirements of individual customers. Traditional automation is geared to high-volume standardized production; the newer ‘flexible manufacturing systems’ are quite different, allowing the production of small volumes without a cost penalty. This creates less space needed, which creates less rent. Modular processes can be taken advantage of to create custom & limited products for niche markets. Focus is now on the principle task of manufacturing. Companies are smaller and subcontract many tasks. Likewise, the production structure began to change on the sector level. Instead of a single firm manning the assembly line from raw materials to finished product, the production process became fragmented as individual firms specialized on their areas of expertise. As evidence for this theory of specialization, proponents claim that clusters of integrated firms, have developed in places like Silicon Valley, Jutland, Småland, and several parts of Italy.
