Splitting production into specialised tasks raises output far beyond the sum of individual efforts, but narrows the worker.
Smith's 1776 pin factory: ten workers dividing eighteen operations produced 48,000 pins a day, against perhaps twenty each working alone. Smith also warned in Book V that the divided worker becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human to become.
In practice
- A software team where one person writes the schema, one the API and one the tests ships more than three generalists, and none of them can now do the others' work.
- A restaurant with a dedicated prep cook, line cook and plater serves four times the covers, and the prep cook has stopped learning to cook.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Economics & Incentives
- Essay
- The theories behind every argument about money