To say that changes are upon us is boring. We've heard it before. Big deal. Things are going well in the auto industry (generally, anyway). We have changed. But I'd like to suggest that this time changes are underway, and for many people, these changes are not going to be beneficial. Let me stress that it is convenient, comforting and wrong to imagine that the "many people" will not include you and me.

One sign of the forthcoming change can be found in the information found in the 1997 "Harbour Report," which we examine in this issue (see: "Assembly Plants: How They Compare"). A quote from Ron Harbour, president of the consulting firm, ought to be a clarion call to plenty of people, no matter what color their collar is: "A plant that doesn't have a competitive product, a competitive workforce, and a competitive level of quality isn't going to survive." It is as simple as that. If you don't have it, you won't make it.

"Wait a minute," you might be thinking. "There are a lot of people involved in this. I can't help it if [take your pick] the design guys have done a lousy job; the engineers have spec'd a J.D. Power loser; the manufacturing people aren't doing their jobs; management is as enlightened as the dark side of the moon."

Certainly, there is no one to blame. Auto manufacturing is a system. So when you hear or read about people like Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, and the notion of systemic effects, take notice, take notes, and learn how to improve system performance. The job you save may be your own.

Some people might figure that if their plants are closed, they'll be okay because they are professionals, that their skills can be easily transferred to another operation. These people are called, in the business parlance of today, "knowledge workers." If one car program goes, they can be assigned to another. Although they might enjoy surfing the Internet, it just may be that the `Net may leave them high and dry, as their could-be tasks are performed on the other side of the world and electronically sent to Flint, Auburn Hills, Dearborn, or wherever.

William Wolman, Business Week's chief economist, and Anne Colamosca, a former BW writer, have written a book, The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work (Addison-Wesley; 240 pp.; $25.00), wherein they argue that no matter whether you are a factory worker or a knowledge worker, if you work for a living, you are now living in a period where things can become very problematic, indeed. Fundamentally, they explain that capital is no longer restricted to the developed world—North America, Western Europe, and Japan—but, especially with the fall of the Berlin Wall, now has lots of other places to go. To state it as simply as possible, those who make money by investing money will go where they can get the biggest bang for their bucks. And given the demographic changes that have occurred, they might not be going to a town near you. Consider this:

"In 1989, 248 million Americans were part of a select industrial-world population of 900 million fully participating in a free global marketplace—some 23% of the world's population. Each American was in effect competing with 2.8 people in the industrial world," the authors note. So the cold war ends. By 1994, "when the free market had penetrated all but the most remote and obdurately communist parts of the world, 260 million Americans faced potential competition from 5.6 billion people around the globe—essentially each American competing with about 21 people."

The reports of auto companies—OEMs and suppliers alike—building or acquiring plants in Poland, China, and other parts of the world are frequent. The people in many of those places want to succeed. They really want to make it and are willing to do what it takes. This is not just an issue for factory workers, either. Wolman and Colamosca write, "The `back end' work of product development—the painstaking job of turning a conceptual design into blueprints, computer code, or working models, and testing the final product—is increasingly being done in Asia these days."

How many people do you know who have the proverbial fire in their belly when it comes to work? Compare that with the number of people who have a burning desire to play a better game of golf. Guess who will win when it comes to global competition?

We'd all better start burning before our jobs get snuffed.