Hans Bayer’s journal article surveys automation in West Germany and then examines the prospects of smaller and medium-sized enterprises within an increasingly capital-intensive economy. Its two sections move from a branch-by-branch account of technological change to the organizational and financial conditions of adaptation. Drawing principally on the Rationalisierungskuratorium der Deutschen Wirtschaft’s 1957 report, Bayer argues that automation already extends across almost all economic sectors, although its depth varies considerably. His central concern is not simply whether smaller firms can acquire machinery, but whether they can establish the production scale and interfirm cooperation that make automation economically viable.
The opening places Germany’s development in an international competitive setting. Bayer reports an assessment that automation has advanced further in Germany than in England, partly because suitable machine tools are more readily available. Modernization increasingly appears necessary for competitive survival, and the common European market promises to intensify this pressure. Nevertheless, the sectoral survey distinguishes comprehensive automation from mechanization, isolated automatic operations, and partially integrated production.
Energy supply provides an essential infrastructure for this development, while electricity distribution, waterworks, and gasworks themselves employ automatic controls. Steelmaking and rolling mills illustrate the replacement of manual operations by centrally controlled machinery; automobile manufacture exemplifies transfer lines connecting successive operations. Elsewhere, integration encounters material and commercial limits. Natural timber is less amenable to automation than manufactured wood products; changing confectionery and bakery products complicate continuous production; textile manufacture faces dust, broken threads, and numerous separate processes. Chemical production, by contrast, offers especially favorable conditions for continuous flow and automatic regulation. These contrasts make the survey an account of differentiated technical possibilities, not a prediction of uniform transformation.
Bayer gives office and administrative work particular prominence. The growing importance of commerce, banking, and insurance makes information processing a central field of automation. Electronic computing and punched-card systems can accelerate accounting, inventory control, production and financial planning, and market analysis. Administrative expansion also creates delays that may prevent firms from recognizing economic shifts or changing demand in time. Automation therefore concerns managerial responsiveness as much as production costs. Yet Bayer qualifies the expectation that it necessarily elevates the character of work:
Nicht selten wird angenommen, daß die Automatisierung in Büro und Verwaltung dem Menschen routinemäßige geistige Arbeit abnahme und ihn für höhere geistige Aufgaben freimache. Dieses trifft nur zum Teil zu.
English translation: It is not infrequently assumed that automation in offices and administration would relieve people of routine mental work and free them for higher intellectual tasks. This is only partly true.
Programming requires academically trained specialists, but the accompanying division of labor also creates monotonous jobs demanding sustained attention rather than independent judgment. The article thus registers a tension between technical sophistication and occupational simplification: more advanced information systems need not produce more autonomous work for everyone.
The second section begins by questioning whether the Mittelstand constitutes a coherent social category. An income-based definition groups together workers, salaried employees, officials, artisans, retailers, and farmers without establishing shared economic interests. Bayer consequently narrows his analysis to enterprises in industry and trade. Automation also undermines classification by workforce size: a plant employing few people may possess substantial capital and enormous productive capacity. His operational definition instead emphasizes capital and turnover:
Wenn wir hier von mittleren und kleineren Unternehmen sprechen, dann meinen wir ein Unternehmen mit verhältnismäßig geringem Realkapital und mittlerem Umsatz.
English translation: When we speak here of medium-sized and smaller enterprises, we mean an enterprise with relatively little real capital and a medium level of turnover.
This distinction separates the concentration of productive resources from the concentration of labor. Automation generally raises the optimal plant size because greater capacity lowers unit costs when fully utilized. Evidence from German craft industries supports the broader concentration argument: output becomes concentrated in fewer enterprises and branches, while average employment per establishment increases. Specialization offers one route of adjustment for smaller producers.
Technical flexibility provides another. Modular construction, standardized components, and reconfigurable production lines can reduce costs and make automation accessible beyond large-scale enterprises. Smaller firms may rent computing equipment or use existing computing centers. Bayer also envisages joint purchasing, potentially on a cooperative basis, while explicitly noting that examples of such cooperation are not known to him. More commonly, smaller firms become subcontractors to large companies, gaining access to equipment and sometimes modernization credit. This route has a decisive qualification:
Dadurch aber verliert das kleinere Unternehmen praktisch seine wirtschaftliche Selbständigkeit.
English translation: Through this, however, the smaller enterprise practically loses its economic independence.
The financing discussion therefore addresses more than a shortage of money. Bayer describes the roles of the Industriekreditbank, the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, ERP resources, and other lending institutions, documenting substantial unmet demand for long-term investment credit. Narrow equity bases and inadequate conventional collateral obstruct modernization. Yet banks’ assessment of creditworthiness cannot itself establish standardized products, coordinated production, or sufficient output volumes.
The conclusion makes this organizational limitation explicit:
Dies aber ist nur durch enge Zusammenarbeit zu erreichen, die erfahrungsgemäß ohne lenkende Einflußnahme von oben her kaum zu erwarten ist.
English translation: This, however, can be achieved only through close cooperation, which experience suggests can hardly be expected without guiding intervention from above.
The sentence refers to the economic prerequisites Bayer places before successful technical or credit measures: standardization, product typification, and extensive interfirm division of labor enabling high production volumes. The article’s distinctive contribution is to connect a concrete survey of automation with a problem of economic organization. Smaller enterprises may adapt, but neither machinery nor finance alone guarantees their survival or independence; coordinated restructuring is the condition that Bayer ultimately considers indispensable.
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