Digital transformation in enterprises: Industry 4.0

4 
therefore increasingly stimulated and oriented by industry towards innovation 
in production processes. 
1.1.1 The mass production – Taylorism and Fordism 
Modernization, science and technology were therefore the basis of the 
restructuring of the companies that took place in these decades to face the 
drop in profits caused by the Great Depression of the late nineteenth century. 
An essential aspect of this process was an increasingly efficient and rational 
use of the machines, which led engineers and technicians to assume an 
increasingly predominant role within the factories. 
The next step after merely technological innovation was an innovation in 
production processes, a reorganization aimed at lowering labor costs and 
increasing productivity; according to the engineer and businessman Frederick 
Taylor, by the end of 1800’s, to enhance and to maximize the efficiency into 
companies, a modern business direction must take decisions on most of the 
tasks that were in the past left to the workers, who, according to Taylor, 
should only work according to the achievement of the objective established 
by the management called "task". In this organizational model called "Task 
Management" the management will therefore be responsible for defining a 
"Task" that workers will have to carry out daily without making changes nor 
in terms of decrease nor in terms of increase. 
  
According to what Hans. D. Prujit claims in his book written in 1997 "Job 
Design and Technology: Taylorism Vs. Anti-Taylorism", Taylorism is 
considered a strategic organizational model that separates thought from 
action: "managers plan work, and workers simply perform the orders." 
The stated goal of Taylor in scientifically organizing the work is to achieve a 
significant increase in production; to achieve that the transformation of the