Standardization has become increasingly common in all products.
Product standardization is a ubiquitous fact of modern life. People have come to take it for granted that most of the products they buy in the store follow a certain model and are of a similar quality. This great fact of standardization is in many ways the result of changes made in the organizational structure of businesses. The organizational structures that exist today are chiefly designed to facilitate the process of product standardization.
Bureaucratization
The sociologist Max Weber described the process that he called bureaucratization in the modern organization. To follow this pattern, each organization strives to reach what Weber considered the ideal bureaucracy. This structure is hierarchical and rule bound. Weber explicitly likened the functioning of a bureaucracy to a machine. Each person acts as a cog in a larger system. This leads to a more standardized product due to every person acting according to rules.
Levels
Following the structure that Weber first described, organizations arrange themselves in hierarchical structures. This means that there are different levels of command, each person reporting to someone else higher up than themselves. This allows organizations to break up production. People higher in the organization can mandate a certain standard. People of lower rank can then manage individuals who create the actual product. Everyone is held accountable for his duties by the person above him.
Rules
To properly do your job and fulfill your purpose in a bureaucratic organization structure you must follow certain rules. The closer the worker is to the actual manufacturer of a product the more specific his rules will usually become. In an industrial organization, for example, there will often be rules stating things like the exact number of times you must hit a certain part with a hammer. In this way variation is limited.
Automation
As the automation of product manufacturing increases, it has actually allowed many organizations to become less bureaucratic in structure. As more of the physical process of product creation is handled by machines, the people involved can afford to be less consistent and more creative. Many organizations have adopted what are called vertical structures, where there is much less hierarchy and people exchange ideas together more frequently. This encourages more innovation in exchange for less consistency.
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