The impact of advanced manufacturing technology on major organizational and managerial concern areas

Abstract

In today's highly competitive global marketplace, many manufacturers are seeking lower cost, higher quality processes in order to increase productivity and enhance flexibility. Many of these manufacturers seek a solution with lower paid workers by either importing them or moving manufacturing operations to low wage locations. Often this is done with disappointing results. Low labor costs are often offset by high turnover rates, low productivity, poor quality of work, high training costs, and high travel and transportation costs. An alternative solution for many manufacturers is automated manufacturing. However, this solution can be costly, involves many complex risks, and provides the inexperienced manufacturers with many technical and management challenges and there also appear to be number of obstacles in this path to integration. The objectives of the research are first to examine the issues surrounding the implementation of Advanced Manufacturing Technology and the survey integration benefits, problems, and major areas for concern cited in recent literature. A second objective seeks to examine how AMT enhances the philosophy and implementation of Total Quality Management and establish it as a hypothetically viable framework within which to address and resolve current TQM integration obstacles. The thesis is divided into Four sections. The first section is a brief history of AMT, followed by a discussion of system benefits and a survey of implementation difficulties cited in the literature. The second section examines the philosophy behind TQM and identifies its basic methodologies. Then examines how AMT enhances the philosophy and implementation of Total Quality Management. The third section discusses methodology development via case study, and involving a company integrating AMT systems and participating in TQM programs. The fourth section reports the research results obtained through detailed descriptions and comparative summaries. The final section addresses research conclusions. The case study shows that TQM involvement appeared to be correlated with better production monitoring and control systems and improved production synchronization. Moreover the case study suggests that functional integration of AMT has positive effect on TQM programs. However, there were other variables present which suggest that future studies should more explicitly concentrate on the effects of budget variation and employer-employee relations.