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Manufacturing technology policy and deployment of processing innovations

  • I. Strategic, Economic And Flexibility Aspects
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Abstract

This is a report of a study on the evolution of manufacturing technology policy during the deployment of domestic advanced manufacturing systems in thirty-four plants and two panels of data collection separated by one year. Changing firm environment was significantly correlated with pioneering product introduction business strategy (p<0.05). More importantly, it was found that manufacturing technology policy is significantly (p<0.05) associated with pioneering business strategy. Further, findings indicate that fine-tuning or modest adjustment in this policy (versus doing nothing or drastic change) was significantly (p<0.05) associated with the maximum levels of reported utilization of these new systems in a subsample of second panel, complete data cases (n=21). This curvilinear relationship between the absolute value of changes in technology policy and performance measure did not hold for the percentage of target cycle time achieved nor uptime, although results concerning performance are considered preliminary at the time of this writing. Advertising this processing technology tends to be inversely related to the radicalness of the technology incorporated into the system (p=0.076) during the deployment period tracked thus far. That is, firms installing more radical systems tend to become very cautious about sharing information about the project once installation begins.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business Administration, The University of Michigan, 48109, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    John E. Ettlie

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  1. John E. Ettlie
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An earlier version of this paper appeared in theProceedings of the 2nd ORSA/TIMS Special Interest Conference on Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Ann Arbor, MI, August 12–15 (1986). This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Grant No. ISI 82-18494, DePaul University, and the Industrial Technology Institute. The views in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the funding agency. The author would like to thank the more than two hundred respondents in eighty organizations that cooperated in this study, and especially those participants in the thirty-nine plants that provided data for this phase of the project. Research assistants in this phase of the project were Ms. Stacy Reifeis, Mr. Mark Vanzant and Mr. Calvin Chang. Assistance in interviewing by Ms. Stacy Reifeis, Mr. Mark Vanzant, Mr. Thomas Short and Dr. David Roitman is gratefully acknowledged. Ms. Sandy Judkins typed the manuscript and Mr. Kevin Brendel prepared fig. 1. Mr. Christopher Getner prepared the tables.

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Ettlie, J.E. Manufacturing technology policy and deployment of processing innovations. Ann Oper Res 15, 1–20 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02186788

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