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This chapter looks at what has happened to the German industrial system over the last decade. The argument of the chapter will be that the optimism of the 1980s was not so much in error as it was one-sided. The changes that began in the early 1990s and have continued throughout the 1990s brought to light problematic dimensions of the German system that were not apparent a decade ago. The chapter outlines what Fordism is and contrasts it with both the German system and alternative, open systems, illustrating the latter with Japanese examples. There is an examination of how the German system compares unfavourably with the alternative systems, contrasting successful and unsuccessful cases of adjustment and suggesting that the successful adjustments may lead to a system that also overcomes some of the limits of the Japanese system.