Operations and Supply Chain Management Commons^™

The Relationship Of Integration And Automation Under An Uncertain Environment: A Sem Model, Qiang Tu, Kun Liao, Yulong Li

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

Under a uncertain environment (i.e., growing global competition, changing customer demand, shorter product life cycles, and increasing market diversity), two manufacturing strategies often emerge: manufacturing technology automation and manufacturing system integration. Existing case studies indicate that firms should adapt manufacturing integration first and then automate the manufacturing system to improve manufacturing performance. Using 288 responses from manufacturing managers, the findings of this study empirically supports this proposition. Analytical results also show that the combination strategies of manufacturing system integration followed by manufacturing technology automation have more than twice the effect on manufacturing performance than using manufacturing automation strategy alone.