2026 年 23 巻 p. 49-68
This paper analyzes the transformation of the U.S. wartime economy during World War II and its formative role in establishing the postwar corporate system and the Pax Americana regime. It sheds light on one of the major pillars of the postwar U.S. corporate system, the American-style mass production system, by showing how wartime production control during World War II directly shaped the institutional foundations of the postwar American-style mass-production system. The wartime production control—particularly the Production Requirements Plan (PRP), the Controlled Materials Plan (CMP), and the Components Scheduling Plan (CSP)—institutionalized nationwide coordination among military demand, industrial supply, and administrative management. In particular, the CMP vertically integrated industrial coordination, aligning critical material flows of steel, copper, and aluminum across firms and sectors. It extended American-style mass production techniques, which operated on the basis of the Bill of Materials and the Order Board system, to the entire wartime economy, creating a vertically integrated framework for synchronizing materials, balancing aggregate demand and supply, and reinforcing large corporations’ dominance. Overall, the wartime experience of these production controls transformed ad hoc mass production into an integrated managerial regime grounded in data reporting, forecasting, and synchronization.
The paper also traces the postwar diffusion of these control systems into the Defense Production Act (1950), Material Requirements Planning (MRP), and modern global supply-chain management (GSCM). The wartime rationality of forecasting, allocation, and synchronization evolved into the managerial and informational architecture of global production. Thus, wartime mobilization was not an exceptional episode, but a key stage in the institutional evolution of modern capitalism and the foundations of the enduring economic order of the Pax Americana regime, even in the era of globalization.
The key question in assessing the wartime transformation of U.S. corporate structure during World War II is how it contributed to establishing the postwar Pax Americana regime. For major belligerents, WWII was a total, mechanized war that forced the creation of wartime economic organizations—planned systems and controls distinct from those of peacetime.
In the United States, industrial mobilization and a fully developed wartime economic system enabled a vast expansion of munitions while sustaining the civilian economy. This system supplied the material base for Allied victory and positioned the United States for postwar industrial dominance.
Industrial output more than doubled between 1939 and 1944, averaging over 15 percent annual growth, compared with about 4 percent from the Civil War to 1939. Manufacturing output—core to military production—more than tripled; raw materials rose by 60 percent (USWPB, Krug 1945, 12–13). Real GNP increased by 90 percent from 1939 to the 1944 peak, with about 40 percent of output driven by military demand (Kawamura 1995, 39–40; USDC, OBE 1951, 206).
This surge rested on long-run U.S. industrial development. By the late 1930s a big-business, American-style Ford-Taylor mass-production corporate system—the combination of scientific management and assembly lines—had made the United States the leading industrial power. Though WWI accelerated this trajectory and the Depression interrupted it, from late 1941 a distinct, demand-led wartime expansion emerged under industrial mobilization. This “wartime high-accumulation” structure generated the output that secured victory.
WWII, the second U.S. “Total War,” dwarfed WWI. The decisive factor was the abrupt, unprecedented volume of military demand compressed in a short period. Based on a comprehensive military procurement program, the state inserted massive orders into the existing industrial system while maintaining the civilian economy. Market and firm behavior alone could not absorb such demand. Normal price and market mechanisms were temporarily suspended and largely replaced by administrative coordination.
The high-accumulation structure, centering on military demand and an industrial-mobilization regime, formed a feedback loop between demand and enterprise (a wartime “military-industrial complex” structure), financed by war-finance mechanisms, and stabilized by a system of economic controls. It also integrated international arrangements, notably export-import and foreign-exchange controls and Allied aid through Lend-Lease. The result was a tightly integrated wartime economic system that, even relative to WWI and other nations, achieved exceptional performance1.
Yet, American organizational principles largely persisted even in wartime: reliance on market signals alongside coordinated integration, civilian control, and “democratic mobilization.”
Three features are pivotal for the postwar order.
First, the system rested on the prewar dominance of large enterprises in heavy-chemical industries. Second, it consolidated the 1930s shift in labor-management relations through a wartime “labor-management truce,” institutionalizing a new industrial-relations framework. Third, the state reorganized and coordinated this large-firm–strong-union structure—first forged under World War I mobilization, eclipsed in the 1920s, revived in the New Deal era (NIRA and the Wagner Act), and organizationally consolidated under World War II labor mobilization—, thereby transforming the state’s economic role after the war.
Thus, the WWII U.S. wartime economy was crucial in shaping the basic postwar structure, especially the corporate system in key industries2. The wartime transformation was not a transient mobilization. It laid the institutional foundations of the postwar American corporate system, centered on a mass-production regime that persisted until the mid-1970s.
From this standpoint, the following analysis focuses on wartime production control and management, which drove the evolution of the American-style Ford-Taylor mass-production system, one of the central pillars of the postwar corporate structure of the postwar Pax Americana-era corporate system.
Between 1917 and 1945 the United States transformed how it mobilized industrial resources for war. In World War I, the War Industries Board (WIB) depended on voluntary cooperation and the personal authority of Bernard Baruch but it lacked strong statutory authority and effective administrative tools (Baruch (1941), 439, 445; Beede (2014)). By the end of World War II, the government had built a sophisticated system of priorities and allocations culminating in the Controlled Materials Plan (CMP), which translated strategic requirements into material allotments across industry (Koistinen (2004): 85–92).
This evolution was uneven, marked by improvisation and political conflict. Policymakers and business leaders faced a recurring problem: coordinating scarce resources in a market economy without full national control. The approach moved from persuasion (1917–18) to interwar paper planning, partial compulsion (1940–42), and finally nationwide allocation (1943–45) (Cuff (1973): 105–15; Kawamura (1998): 56–63)3.
Created in July 1917 and chaired by Baruch, the WIB organized commodity sections, negotiated prices, and issued “priority certificates,” but functioned mainly through persuasion (Cuff (1973): 105–15). Its weaknesses—rising prices, persistent bottlenecks, and excess reliance on industry self-reporting—exposed the limits of voluntary coordination (Kawamura (1998): 56–59) and created demand for stronger legal and administrative tools before the next war.
After 1918, mobilization planning continued under the National Defense Act of 1920 through the Planning Branch and the Army–Navy Munitions Board (ANMB)4. The Industrial Mobilization Plans (IMPs) of the 1920s–30s envisioned a War Resources Administration, priority classes, and stockpiling. The first IMP appeared in 1931; the final draft was completed in 1939 (Koistinen (1980): 121–28). Yet the plans were mainly theoretical, without statutory authority or industrial support, and the Depression further eroded the military-industrial connection (Kawamura (1998): 60–63).
2.1.2 Industrial Mobilization in the “Defense Period” and the Early Priorities SystemGermany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, began WWII. United States initially maintained neutrality. The M-Day—the official designation for the “zero hour” at which war would break out and immediate mobilization would be triggered in the prewar Industrial Mobilization Plan (IMP)—did not arrive. The fall of France in June 1940 convinced Roosevelt to accelerate rearmament (USCPA (1947a): 43; USBB (1946): 20–21). He had formed the War Resources Board (WRB) in August 1939, chaired by E. R. Stettinius, but it ended by January 1940 (Somers (1950): 6–9). After France’s defeat, he created the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and revived the National Defense Advisory Commission (NDAC) in May 1940, which marked the start of full-scale mobilization. Appropriations expanded for aircraft, shipbuilding, munitions, and facilities (USBB (1946): 21–23; Kawamura (1994b): 18–22).
Between autumn 1940 and spring 1941 defense programs grew rapidly. The Third Supplemental National Defense Appropriation Act (Oct 8, 1940) added $1.37 billion for the Army and $840 million for the Navy. The Selective Service Act (Sept 16, 1940) allocated $300 million for barracks and training camps. Further appropriations in March and April 1941 raised Army authorizations to $9.4 billion and expanded Navy funds to more than $6 billion5. Aircraft output targets rose to 80,000 planes (Report 8-C 1941); shipbuilding advanced under the Two-Ocean Navy Act; the Liberty Ship program began (Coleman (1945): 44–51); and defense housing started under the Lanham Act (Oct 14, 1940) (McGrane (1945): 33–37).
By late 1940, defense contracts reached $17 billion (Kuznets (1945): 123). Shortages of machine tools and raw materials appeared—70 percent of machine tools were obsolete (McGrane and Thomases (1947): 28–30). Steel plants operated at capacity; aluminum was dominated by Alcoa until Reynolds entered with RFC loans (Sitterson (1946): 19–23). NDAC’s voluntary rating system (Aug 1940) quickly produced “priority inflation”: most contracts carried an “A” rating, nullifying its meaning (Nelson (1946): 44–49; Kawamura (1998): 73–77). A Priorities Board was formed in October, but the system collapsed soon after.
2.1.3 Toward Comprehensive Material Allocation Control: The Defense Supplies Rating Plan (DSRP)The individual-contract (preference-rating) system failed as contracts multiplied, creating priority inflation (McCauley (1947): 88). Early L- and M-Orders were reactive and lacked quantitative coordination (Kawamura (1998): 78–80). By mid-1941, machine-tool delivery times of eight to ten months delayed aircraft and tank production (Wiltse (1946): 43–44). The Second Dunn Report (May 15 1941) confirmed steel shortages of 1.4 million tons for 1941 and 6.4 million for 1942, showing that priority orders alone could not restore balance (McCauley (1947): 89). New measures followed: M-17 (Aug 1 1941) allocated pig iron, M-21 (Aug 9) extended control to all steel, and M-24 (Oct 11) placed steel scrap under compulsory control (USFTC (1946): 76, 93).
Shortages of aluminum, copper, magnesium, and zinc soon required allocation (Krug (1945): 57; Grundstein (1947): 213–16). By late 1941 virtually all basic materials were under direct management. Yet piecemeal measures still lacked a quantitative standard linking requirements and supply. To stabilize material flows and balance demand and resources, the United States moved toward comprehensive allocation controls, leading ultimately to the Controlled Materials Plan (CMP), a fully integrated allocation system unique to the U.S. wartime economy.
To cope with rising shortages and fragmented controls, Roosevelt reorganized mobilization agencies. He created the Office of Production Management (OPM) on Dec 20, 1940 (Executive Order 8629, Jan 7, 1941; USBB (1946): 37–42) and the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply (OPACS) in April 1941, later the OPA under the Emergency Price Control Act (USOTC/OPA (1947): 20, 202).
On Aug 28, 1941, Executive Order 8875 established the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board (SPAB), the first high-level body to reconcile military, civilian, and foreign-aid needs (Sommers (1950): 41–45). Working through the OPM, SPAB unified priority allocation and marked a major institutional advance. The new structure merged priority and allocation control into one framework and shifted the focus from ad hoc orders toward direct, comprehensive allocation6.
Priorities Regulation No.1 (Aug 27, 1941) defined defense orders and procedures, followed by Regulation No.2 (Sep 9, 1941), which converted the voluntary system into a compulsory one (USCPA (1947a): 181–82; USWBB (1943): 150–51). Under Donald Nelson, the Defense Supplies Rating Plan (DSRP) represented the first systematic step toward direct allocation—a “quasi-wartime” regime immediately before U.S. entry into the war. Estimating requirements, however, required vast statistical work, and industry’s slow data reporting hampered decisions. SPAB issued successive Priorities Regulations to clarify defense contracts and streamline administration7.
Even so, processing remained overwhelmed. Five different forms for priority applications caused severe delays. By August 1941 the system neared collapse: of 5000 applications for PD-1 certification, only 1800 were processed, leaving over 18000 pending. Abolishing Form PD-2 and authorizing rubber-stamp endorsement on PD-1 accelerated handling; within three weeks the backlog fell to 704 (USCPA (1947a): 181–82; USWBB (1943): 150–51)8.
2.2 Development of the Integrated Wartime Production Control and Management System after U.S. Entry into the War: December 1941–August 19459 2.2.1 Toward Full-Scale Industrial MobilizationAfter U.S. entry into the war in December 1941, the Victory Program was expanded into the War Munitions Program. Military-procurement targets were initially $60 billion for 1942, $101 billion for 1943, and $75 billion for 1944, later revised for feasibility10. Actual procurement reached $57 billion in 1942, $86 billion in 1943, and a wartime peak of $93 billion in 1944—about $320 billion in total (USCPA, WPB (1947), vol.II).
Full-scale industrial mobilization was inevitable11. The War Production Board (WPB), created in January 1942 under Donald M. Nelson, became the central coordinating agency (USBB (1946): 37–42). It was complemented by the Office of Price Administration (OPA) for price control and the Office of Economic Stabilization (OES) for wage–price coordination. The Office for Emergency Management (OEM) initially oversaw these agencies; the Office of War Mobilization (OWM) later assumed that supervisory role.
A vast array of specialized wartime agencies followed; excluding the military, about 165 government institutions managed the mobilization system (Vatter (1985): 87). Labor and agriculture agencies, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), and other New Deal bodies were reoriented for wartime needs. The administrative reach of the U.S. wartime state thus extended across nearly all sectors—far exceeding World War I in scale12.
Under the WPB, production controls became increasingly integrated. By mid-1942 projected programs exceeded capacity, reaching 75 percent of GNP. In October–November 1942, the “Must Program” capped procurement at $106 billion, with $50 billion for critical items (USCPA (1947a): 290–91). Lend-Lease was also a crucial part: a total of over $49 billion went to 44 nations, chiefly Britain and the USSR (Brown and Opie (1953): 59–82; Kawamura (1986): 15–17).
To sustain this expansion, priorities and allocation mechanisms were improved. In early 1942 the Production Requirements Plan (PRP) introduced comprehensive allocation control, and from the first quarter of 1943 the Controlled Materials Plan (CMP) completed the fully integrated system for basic materials.
2.2.2 The Production Requirements Plan (PRP)Conceived to overcome the DSRP’s deficiencies, the PRP was introduced in June 1942 as a compulsory program covering all metal-consuming industries. It relied on factory-level production plans and material requirements, enabling the WPB to allocate essential inputs—nonferrous metals and alloys, ferroalloys, steel, chemicals, nonmetallic minerals, and agricultural and marine commodities—directly across the military and civilian supply structure (see Figure 1)13.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Budget (1946): 309, 311
Each manufacturer submitted reports based on the minimum inventory-control unit. Using Form PD-25A, firms declared shipment values by product category and end use, reporting actual and projected shipments for the two preceding quarters, the current quarter, and the subsequent quarters. They also listed inventories of raw materials, work in process, finished goods, and operating supplies.
An annex, Material List No.1, required reporting of quantities of key raw materials—nonferrous metals, ferroalloys, and steel by type and form—plus chemicals and other inputs. For each, firms specified quantities used, received, and held, as well as projected requirements. Materials outside List No.1 but subject to priority ratings were reported separately; purchases of components and semi-finished goods, along with maintenance and operating supplies, were declared in dollar values.
Based on these submissions, the WPB determined priority ratings and authorized procurement quantities for each quarter, returning endorsed copies to the firms. Unlike the DSRP’s uniform A-10 rating, the PRP used a graded scale from A-1 to A-9 according to defense or essential-use importance.
The PRP introduced quantitative control from both input and output sides of production. Form PD-25A data on inventories gave authorities full visibility into manufacturers’ operations, while Material List No.1 standardized requirements reporting. This made the PRP far more comprehensive than the DSRP, representing each firm’s total defense-related and essential-civilian production.
Methodologically, the PRP adopted a horizontal allocation approach—allocating materials across each level of the supply chain rather than along industrial hierarchies (Novick et al. (1947): 98–99; USCPA (1947a): 457–58). Once implemented nationwide, however, this method’s drawbacks surfaced. Control extended to some 15000 plants, generating an administrative burden beyond the WPB’s capacity. Delays accumulated, implementation lagged, and production schedules slipped. The PRP also lacked any mechanism to reduce aggregate military-procurement totals, limiting civilian oversight14.
These problems led to the Controlled Materials Plan (CMP), launched in the second quarter of 1943. Characterized by vertical allocation along major firms’ existing supply chains, the CMP became the backbone of wartime materials management. In preparation, the WPB was reorganized: policy functions were largely transferred to the OWM, while its role as executive agency for allocation control was strengthened.
2.2.3 The Controlled Materials Plan (CMP)The CMP applied production-management techniques pioneered in U.S. mass-production industries, especially in the automobile industry—such as the Bill of Materials (BOM) and the Order Board system. It represented the extension of “the techniques and experience of American mass production to the entire wartime economy” (USCPA (1947a): 487) and was called “the most complex administrative mechanism created during the war” (Novick et al. (1949): 167).
The CMP was a comprehensive system governing three essential “controlled materials”: carbon and alloy steels, copper and brass, and aluminum. It operated on the basis of the overall military-procurement program established by the Army, Navy, and Maritime Commission, together with essential-civilian and Lend-Lease requirements. The Production Executive Committee of the WPB coordinated these programs and maintained the national production schedule.
Control functioned through two information flows:
1) Each governmental “requiring agency”—military services, civilian-supply agencies, and Lend-Lease—aggregated its contractors’ material requirements based on BOMs. Prime contractors compiled data from their suppliers and submitted totals to the WPB Requirements Committee, which reconciled them with available supplies. Allocations were then issued to each agency.
2) Allocated quantities were distributed downward from prime contractors to subcontractors and suppliers in proportion to each supplier’s requirements.
This vertical integration centralized material-flow coordination throughout the industrial hierarchy. By late 1943 the CMP operated effectively and remained in operation briefly after V-J Day and expired at midnight on September 30, 1945.
For standardized components and semi-finished products (“B-items”) unsuited to vertical allocation, a limited horizontal method from the PRP was retained. Persistent shortages of lumber, paper, textiles, and some components prompted further refinements. In June 1943 the Components Scheduling Plan (CSP) was launched to regulate production and delivery of critical parts for ships, tanks, and rubber plants, applying the same vertical-allocation logic.
Completion of this material-flow system centered on the CMP—and supplemented by the CSP—had lasting significance. The CMP secured the smooth operation of the wartime industrial system through three main features:
1) Allocation of Basic Productive Factors. The CMP distributed the key bottleneck materials—steel, copper, and aluminum—across all production sectors, ensuring timely availability and supporting quantitative production targets.
2) Balancing Aggregate Demand and Supply. It furnished procedures for aligning military and civilian programs with total supply capacity. Controlled materials were subdivided into 17 categories by type and form, allowing precise balancing. Because allocation required reconciling total demand with available supply, the CMP—through the WPB Requirements Committee mechanism— effectively enforced reductions in military-procurement programs across the requiring agencies (e.g., Army procurement agencies). It provided quantitative standards for all other controls, including L-Orders and M-Orders.
3) Institutional Dependence on Existing Corporate Structures. By operating through established industrial hierarchies, the CMP gave major contractors authority to apportion materials to subcontractors, reinforcing the dominance of large corporations within the wartime economy (Vatter (1985): 59). It thus strengthened the pre-existing corporate system centered on big enterprises.
The CMP not only ensured efficient wartime production but also had deep structural consequences. By institutionalizing vertical integration between state and industry, it forged a cooperative system linking federal administration and big business. The CMP was therefore both the culmination of wartime production management and the institutional prototype for postwar production-planning and material-requirements systems that supported the sustained growth of the Pax Americana era.
After the end of World War II, the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 once again forced the United States to confront the problem of industrial mobilization. Yet unlike the improvisations of 1940–41, policymakers in 1950 possessed a tested repertoire of wartime allocation mechanisms—PRP, CMP, and CSP—still fresh in policymakers’ minds. To institutionalize these powers in permanent form, Congress passed the Defense Production Act (DPA) in September 1950, granting the president sweeping authority to direct industrial resources toward national defense.
The DPA established the mobilization framework grounded in three primary authorities: the prioritization of materials (Title I), financial incentives and loan guarantees for expanding production capacity (Title III), and general provisions, including the establishment of voluntary agreements (Title VII) (Neenan 2023, 1, 5–15).
Title I created the legal basis for priorities and allocations, authorizing the president to require that defense contracts take precedence over civilian orders and to allocate scarce materials and components essential to national security. Title III empowered the government to expand productive capacity through loans, purchase commitments, and subsidies, ensuring the long-term availability of strategic inputs such as synthetic rubber, titanium, and semiconductors. Title VII granted antitrust exemptions for voluntary agreements, permitting firms to collaborate under government oversight in planning committees and industry associations without fear of prosecution.
Together, these provisions created a permanent legal architecture for mobilization, embedding wartime practices into peacetime law. Under Title I, the Department of Commerce established the Defense Priorities and Allocations System (DPAS), the direct institutional descendant of the wartime CMP and CSP. At its core, DPAS functioned through “rated orders” of a priority classification: DX (highest priority) for the most critical programs—such as nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Polaris submarines—and DO (standard priority) for a broader range of essential defense needs. Current federal regulations mandate that contractors fulfill these rated orders ahead of any unrated commercial orders (15 C.F.R. pt. 700).
The efficacy of this system was demonstrated by 1952, at the height of the Korean War mobilization, when the impact of priority allocations on the civilian economy became significant. Using shipment data submitted to the National Production Authority, the Survey of Current Business estimated that shipments against military and other rated orders in 1952 accounted for approximately one-fifth of total shipments in the automobile industry (USDC, OBE (1953): 4).
The broader significance of the DPA lay in the fact that it transformed mobilization from an emergency measure into a permanent feature of the American political economy15.
3.2 The Golden Age of American Mass Production in the 1950s and 1960sThe institutionalization of the Defense Production Act created a dual economic structure in the United States after the Korean War. On one side stood a standing defense-mobilization base, permanently embedded in aerospace and electronics procurement. On the other was a rapidly expanding civilian market centered on consumer durables.
This configuration brought about the so-called “Golden Age” of American mass production, a period extending roughly from 1950 to 1973—characterized by high growth, low unemployment, technological dynamism, and global industrial dominance—all hallmarks of the U.S. economy in the postwar Pax Americana era (Kawamura (2003); see also, Glyn et al. (1988)). Yet beneath this prosperity, the logic of wartime allocation continued to shape corporate practices, managerial hierarchies, and technological systems.
Nowhere was this legacy more apparent than in the automobile industry. By the mid-1950s, U.S. automakers were producing more than seven million vehicles annually, peaking at nearly eight million in 1955. The “Big Three”—GM, Ford, and Chrysler—relied on vertically integrated factories but also depended on vast supply chains involving thousands of subcontractors providing steel, glass, rubber, and parts.
The wartime Controlled Materials Plan had accustomed automakers to receiving and redistributing quotas among suppliers, and this logic persisted in postwar routines. Firms developed contract systems that resembled CMP cascades, with quarterly allocations of steel and other inputs distributed across supplier networks. Supplier-certification practices, requiring strict documentation of quality and delivery schedules, mirrored the PRP’s compulsory reporting discipline. Forward scheduling, capacity planning, and bottleneck management—all institutionalized during the war—became standard features of mass automobile production.
The aerospace sector displayed even clearer continuity. Cold War bombers, missiles, and satellites operated under DPAS contracts that carried DX or DO ratings, ensuring that critical materials such as titanium, nickel alloys, and high-performance jet engines were channeled preferentially to defense programs. Missile programs such as Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman depended on thousands of subcontractors, all linked by cascading rated orders that operated much like CSP directives.
Satellite programs at Hughes, RCA, and Raytheon relied on DX-rated semiconductors and precision instruments, reproducing the synchronization logic of wartime bottleneck management. Scholars such as Wilson (2016): 214–31 argue that the aerospace industry effectively operated as a permanent wartime economy, even in peacetime, with mobilization practices institutionalized as its normal mode of operation.
A more direct descendant of the PRP was Materials Requirements Planning (MRP). During the war, firms had been compelled to submit detailed bills of materials, inventory data, and forward schedules, which WPB analysts aggregated into national requirements tables. In the 1960s, Joseph Orlicky at IBM and George Plossl formalized this logic into a computerized system. MRP began with a master production schedule. Companies such as Black & Decker and American Bosch became early adopters, and by the late 1960s MRP had spread widely (Plossl (1994): 13–19).
Kawamura (1998): 101–7 emphasizes that MRP was not an ex nihilo invention but rather the computerization of the PRP’s wartime discipline of forecasting and reporting.
The postwar decades also saw the institutionalization of a new scientific discipline rooted in wartime experience: operations research and management science. Born from military logistics and optimization during World War II, operations research (OR) spread into civilian industry with Pentagon sponsorship in the 1950s.
In many ways, OR systematized the rationality first introduced by the PRP and CMP—the belief that complex production systems could be quantified, modeled, and optimized through data collection and analysis (Morse and Kimball (1951); Churchman, Ackoff, and Arnoff (1957))16.
The 1970s marked the transformation of the postwar Pax Americana regime. It was the beginning of the unraveling of the American Fordist system that had defined the postwar decades. After the U.S. economy slipped into stagflation from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, unstable economic growth undermined the stable demand environment that had underpinned mass-production routines. For nearly thirty years in the postwar era, the United States had enjoyed unrivaled prosperity and industrial dominance, centering on the postwar corporate system in the key mass-production industries, but the system of vertically integrated mass production began to fracture under new global and domestic pressures. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 were particularly destabilizing. The quadrupling of energy costs hit American factories—especially the automobile industry—hard, undermining the production of large, fuel-hungry vehicles that had been the mainstay of Detroit. These pressures pushed U.S. firms toward new forms of coordination—first within the firm and its supplier networks, and later across borders—setting the stage for the global reorganization of value and supply chains.
Foreign competition also intensified. Japanese and West German firms, particularly in automobiles, steel, and consumer electronics, rapidly displaced U.S. producers in global markets, eroding America’s postwar industrial supremacy.
These shocks revealed the weaknesses of the traditional Fordist model, which relied heavily on large inventories, rigid batch schedules, and domestic vertical integration. With rising volatility, firms could no longer depend on stable inputs or captive markets. The American system, which had grown from wartime allocation and matured amid the consumer abundance of the 1950s and 1960s, faced its greatest challenge in coping with increasing uncertainty while sustaining productivity and quality (Kawamura (2003); Kawamura (2024), (2025)).
The most striking alternative came from Japan, where Toyota and other firms had developed the Japanese-style management and production system (JM&PS)—its core characterized by the lean production system, centering on Just-in-Time (JIT) principles. Refined during the 1960s and widely adopted in the 1970s, JIT challenged the American reliance on large buffer stocks. Its key features included the use of the kanban system—a pull-based replenishment system rather than the push-based scheduling typical of U.S. mass production—long-term integration with suppliers, who were expected to deliver parts in small batches on short notice, and a strong emphasis on continuous improvement (kaizen) to eliminate waste and enhance quality.
To many American observers, the lean (JIT) production system appeared radically opposed to the wartime allocation mentality of stockpiling and rationing17. Yet at a deeper level, JIT shared a common logic with the Controlled Materials Plan and the Component Schedule Plan. Both were concerned with synchronization: CMP guaranteed the flow of steel, copper, and aluminum through cascading quotas, while JIT ensured that parts arrived precisely when needed, with minimal inventory. In both cases, the underlying objective was the same—to maintain system-wide coherence in the face of scarcity or uncertainty.
Drawing on the author’s long-running field research and factory-level case evidence (see also Kawamura, ed. (2011)), U.S. firms, by the 1980s began experimenting with JIT practices, though often with difficulty. The Detroit automakers attempted to adopt kanban systems, but their supplier networks were less cooperative and more adversarial than the Japanese keiretsu, making adaptation uneven18. Nonetheless, JIT forced American managers to reconsider the wartime-influenced philosophy of stockpiling and long lead times. Efficiency, flexibility, and supplier integration became central concerns, gradually reshaping American industrial practice.
At the same time, another lineage of wartime rationality advanced in parallel: the computerization of materials planning. Materials Requirements Planning (MRP), which had emerged in the 1960s as the direct descendant of the wartime Production Requirements Plan, evolved into more comprehensive systems. MRP II, or Manufacturing Resource Planning, extended the logic beyond materials to include capacity planning, shop-floor control, and financial integration during the 1980s. By the 1990s, these systems converged into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), with software such as SAP and Oracle integrating procurement, production, logistics, finance, and human resources into a single digital framework. In essence, what had begun as the paper-based reporting discipline of the PRP in 1942 became, half a century later, the backbone of global corporate information systems (Plossl (1994): 13–19; Kawamura (1998): 221–29).
4.2 Globalization and Supply Chain ManagementThe 1990s witnessed the crystallization of supply chain management (SCM) as a distinct managerial paradigm under advancing globalization. Whereas MRP and ERP focused on planning within a single enterprise, SCM emphasized coordination across firms. The concept was end-to-end integration—from raw-material suppliers to final retailers—treated as one interconnected chain. Achieving this required new tools of visibility and communication, including electronic data interchange (EDI), barcoding, and later internet-based platforms that enabled real-time sharing of inventory and demand data. Optimization became the guiding principle: minimizing costs while maximizing responsiveness and flexibility across global networks.
One of the most celebrated examples was Wal-Mart, which leveraged its enormous purchasing power to demand real-time inventory data from suppliers and synchronize logistics across distribution centers. Its system of continuous replenishment, enabled by EDI and satellite communication, forced suppliers to align production schedules with retail flows. Conceptually, this was the global extension of the CSP’s synchronization logic: where the CSP had synchronized scarce engines and bearings with bomber schedules, Wal-Mart synchronized container slots, trucks, and retail shelves across continents (Christopher (2016): 53–59).
Globalization amplified both the potential and the risks of these practices. From the 1980s onward, electronics firms such as Apple, Dell, and IBM shifted assembly to East Asia while retaining design and R&D in the United States, creating far-flung production networks. Automakers established transplant factories in Asia and Latin America, and consumer-goods companies outsourced entire chains to contract manufacturers abroad. The coordination problems once managed by the War Production Board in 1942 now reappeared globally, as managers sought to allocate labor, logistics, and components across continents.
At the same time, globalization revived the wartime lesson of resilience. The oil shocks exposed the vulnerability of energy inputs; Asian currency crises revealed financial fragility; and geopolitical disruptions underscored the need for contingency planning. Firms invested in dual sourcing, buffer stocks, and redundancy strategies—echoing wartime practices of anticipating bottlenecks, simulating shortages, and adjusting schedules. This concern with resilience reflected a return to the rationality of PRP and CMP, reframed in the language of late-twentieth-century risk management.
By the end of the century, the institutional arc from wartime allocation to global SCM was clear. The Production Requirements Plan of 1942 had inaugurated systematic forecasting and reporting; the Controlled Materials Plan of 1943 had pioneered cascading quotas; and the Components Scheduling Plan of 1944 had synchronized bottlenecks with end-item programs. These systems reappeared in DPAS rated orders, in the computerized forecasting of MRP and ERP, and finally in the global orchestration of SCM. The underlying logic—forecasting, allocation, synchronization, and flow-down—remained constant, even as technological means and organizational scales expanded.
In this sense, the rise of Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM) marked not merely the culmination of wartime-influenced coordination mechanisms but a new phase of the institutional and organizational transformation of the postwar Pax Americana regime. The postwar U.S. corporate system, originally based on a national industrial structure, was reorganized under globalization into a transnational corporate regime. This transformation restructured the institutional foundations of Pax Americana—shifting from domestic mass production and vertically integrated corporations to globally networked production, distributed accumulation, and information-based coordination. Within this new regime, GSCM functioned as the operational architecture linking production, logistics, and finance worldwide, embedding the logic of synchronization and control into the infrastructure of global capitalism.
As Kawamura (2011, Ch. 6) argues in Hybrid Factories, the hybrid adaptation of JM&PS in the U.S. context demonstrates its global adaptability. Extending that argument backward, this paper has shown how the epistemology of synchronization—first institutionalized in wartime allocation—was carried forward into Cold War mobilization and later globalized through SCM and GSCM practices.
The American experience of World War II was not merely a logistical success but a transformation in managerial rationality. The introduction of the PRP, CMP, and CSP created mechanisms unprecedented in both scale and scope. For the first time, systematic data collection was imposed on thousands of firms, standardized through compulsory reporting forms. Forecasting and simulation of material requirements were institutionalized at the national level. Allocation and synchronization across entire supply chains were enforced by law, creating a managed industrial system that no single firm could control on its own.
These mechanisms forged a new epistemology of management. Industry came to be viewed not as a set of discrete plants but as a system of interdependent flows that could be modeled and coordinated. Alfred Chandler’s The Visible Hand (1977) traced the rise of managerial hierarchies in American business during the early twentieth century, yet wartime allocation decisively accelerated this process by embedding hierarchical coordination and quantitative reporting into everyday routines. Louis Galambos (2000) described the organizational synthesis of the postwar decades as grounded in the professionalization of management; World War II served as the great training ground for that professionalization.
The Cold War extended these lessons by institutionalizing mobilization as a permanent feature of the U.S. political economy. The Defense Production Act of 1950 and its DPAS ensured that the allocation logic of the early 1940s was preserved in law. DX and DO rated orders carried forward the cascading obligations of CMP quotas, while Title III capacity expansion institutionalized the long-term planning logic of PRP. Title VII exemptions normalized cooperative planning among competitors. The mobilization base thus became permanent—an enduring feature of American capitalism (Koistinen (1980; 2004); USCRS (2018)).
The prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s—the Golden Age of mass production—should therefore be understood not only as an economic boom but as the civilian translation of wartime routines. Automakers used CMP-style allocation to distribute steel and components to suppliers; aerospace firms operated under CSP-like synchronization through DPAS contracts; operations research codified the analytical rationality of PRP and CMP; and MRP computer systems directly descended from wartime reporting practices. The consumer abundance of Pax Americana was built upon the bureaucratic and statistical disciplines of the Arsenal of Democracy (Kawamura (1995; 1998)).
The transformations of the 1970s and beyond did not overturn this legacy but extended it globally. Japanese JIT systems challenged the American preference for buffer stocks, but their underlying goal of synchronization echoed wartime practices. MRP evolved into MRP II and ERP, computerizing and integrating the very forecasting disciplines pioneered by the WPB. Supply Chain Management (SCM) in the 1990s and 2000s projected these routines across continents, orchestrating container flows, component shipments, and retail inventories. The same principles of forecasting, allocation, synchronization, and cascading obligations—first imposed under wartime compulsion—now govern global supply-chain operations.
The theoretical significance of this trajectory is threefold.
First, the American case shows that wartime mobilization was not an exceptional deviation from capitalism but a formative moment in its institutional evolution, leaving durable imprints on corporate practice and state capacity.
Second, wartime institutions accelerated the rise of managerial hierarchies and professionalized bureaucracies, embedding systemic planning rationality into the DNA of corporations.
Third, the epistemology of modern supply-chain management originated in the statistical, administrative, and allocative tools of the 1940s. What began as government compulsion was later internalized as corporate best practice and eventually exported as global managerial orthodoxy.
Contemporary debates about supply-chain resilience—whether responding to oil shocks, financial crises, geopolitical disruption, or pandemics—revisit issues first confronted in 1942. The fragility of global networks, the need for redundancy, and the balance between efficiency and resilience all echo the wartime challenge of securing copper, steel, bearings, and engines under scarcity and urgency.
From the Arsenal of Democracy to global supply chains, the story is one of continuity through transformation. World War II introduced the rationality of systematic coordination; the Cold War institutionalized it as a permanent mobilization base; the Golden Age diffused it into consumer industries; and globalization reconstituted it as the governing logic of the world economy. As Kawamura (1995; 1998; 2023) has emphasized, the legacy of wartime allocation lies not only in its contribution to Allied victory but in its institutional significance: it forged the routines by which modern capitalism learned to plan, coordinate, and govern interdependent systems. The U.S. wartime economic system during World War II—the Arsenal of Democracy—thus lives on not only in the history of the 1940s but in every ERP dashboard and global supply-chain algorithm systems that sustain today’s global economy. This is not a claim of linear determinism but of institutional repertories carried forward and reconfigured.
*This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20H01541 (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)), titled “Redesigning International Management Strategies under Deglobalization: A Crowd-Ecological Approach” (Principal Investigator: Haruo Horaguchi, Professor, Faculty of Business Administration, Hosei University, FY2020–2024). This article synthesizes the author’s published research and more than three decades of fieldwork. ChatGPT (OpenAI) was used for limited English-language editing support (grammar and phrasing) and for bibliographic assistance (e.g., suggesting and helping locate candidate sources for the author to verify); the author verified all content and citations and takes full responsibility for the final manuscript.
