The Factory of the Future? The Contradictory Restructuring of an Assembly Line in France

This paper studies how the introduction of new technologies and a new organiza-tion of work transforms the labour process at an assembly line of the PSA group in France. The firm presents the new organization as an innovative modernization bringing forward the "Factory of the Future" through concepts directly inspired by Industrie 4.0 and Industrie du futur. At the same time, this modernization also re-sponds to the need for the plant to become more competitive in order to face the consequences of the economic crisis of 2008. Drawing from data obtained through fieldwork (interviews with workers, union representatives and internal documents), the author shows that behind the rhetoric of modernization and industrial excel-lence, the firm intensifies work in assembly operations and workers lose autono-my.