pp. 711-737

This article looks into the way in which the Renault plants today tend towards the management ideal known as industrial fluidity. A succession of heterogeneous technical solutions (fully-automatic production line, manual assembly line) ; an accumulation of managerial and procedurial systems structure and organize the continuity of production (in terms of quality/cost/delivery time) by acting on the technical and social dimensions of industrial fluidity. The linking of these accesses to fluidity reveals a set up based on eminently fragile foundations which resist thanks to the existence of voluntarily hazy compensation work from the flow operators. This work puts into action forms of social regulation which depend largely on social-technical systems of which they are a part. But far from this being relatively stable and converging autonomous regulation, this social practice is itself developed along a « razor edge ».