Advanced manufacturing technology: Implementation policy and performance

This article investigates the relationships between adoption of various advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT), the way that firms plan for and implement them, and their eventual performance. Data obtained from 125 manufacturing firms in the U.S. is used to test several hypotheses which were derived from an extensive review of the AMT implementation literature. The four research questions that drive this study are: (1) What types of planning and installation activities have firms utilized to support their AMT adoptions?, (2) do differences in the level of effort applied to these activities have any impact on the eventual performance of the systems?, (3) are firms that are using integrated technologies, such as FMC/FMS and CIM, applying higher levels of effort on these planning and installation activities than other firms?, and (4) Are these firms achieving higher levels of success than firms that are not using the integrated technologies. The results indicate that firms adopting integrated technologies had exerted significantly higher levels of effort on strategic planning and team-based project management and had also achieved higher levels of performance across a wider range of performance factors than other firms. In addition, firms that had exerted higher levels of effort on developing human factors appeared to be achieving more of the benefits of AMT than their counterparts. The overall results and the research and practical implications of this study are discussed.