368 JÜRGEN DANYEL AND ANNETTE SCHUHMANN
mainframe. Smaller companies tended to rely on mid-level data technol-
ogy or external computing centers. Banks and insurance companies, in
contrast, were usually among the users of large mainframe systems be-
cause these branches were strongly centralized.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the big automobile manufacturers
launched investment initiatives. They pushed through the computeriza-
tion of the assembly process, sometimes quite aggressively. The pres-
ence of industrial robots in the production halls of car factories came to
symbolize this development. The concepts of such perfected production
systems carried many diff erent names, the most common of which was
Computer Integrated Manufacturing, or CIM. For some, CIM was a night-
mare; for others, it was the ultimate ideal because it was always tied to
the image of a factory almost entirely devoid of people. In a CIM factory,
the idea was to take advantage of all the possibilities for technical ratio-
nalization, including the automation of processes that used to be consid-
ered mental work in places like construction offi ces. According to this
theory, all production and administrative processes would be networked
and controlled centrally in the future. The production of the Golf II that
began in 1983 in the legendary “Halle 54” of the Volkswagen plant was
considered to be the prime example of a CIM facility.^62
The installation of systems such as those in a fully automated factory
required a very high level of investment, but the profi tability of these
ventures was diffi cult to prove. The extremely high amount of time and
energy that had to be put into the development of the necessary software
led to long timelines for projects, but the state of information technology
was continually advancing. Projects that seemed viable at fi rst were of-
ten outdated by the time that they were actually put to use. Despite the
awareness of the shortcomings of CIM projects that had developed in the
1980s, the West German government continued to subsidize these proj-
ects between 1987 and 1992 with 580 million German Marks. In addition,
it provided over 300 million German Marks for pilot projects of this kind,
as well as for projects that were already further down the line in twelve
hundred companies.^63
Despite a delayed start, microelectronics also found their way into the
factories and administrative offi ces of East Germany in the early 1970s.
First and foremost, these mainframes and offi ce computers impacted the
everyday work of employees. Even production workers found themselves
confronted more and more with this new technology, especially those
who worked in the manufacturing and supply plants that were part of the
microelectronics program. Other portions of the workforce fi rst came into
contact with industrial robots as rationalization eff orts were introduced.