رابطه و اثر تکنولوژی های تولید در تولید عملکرد عملیاتی

ABSTRACT The unique and complementary effects of manufacturing technologies and lean practices on manufacturing operational performance

Global competition has intensified pressure on manufacturing plants to improve along multiple dimensions of operational performance. These operational performance dimensions include product quality, lead-time, flexibility, and cost (Boyer and Lewis, 2002; Hayes and Wheelwright, 1984; Tan et al., 2004). Consequently, numerous studies have attempted to identify the various resources that can be utilized to help firms to excel on these multiple operational dimensions. Based on the past research on this topic (Das, 2001; Swamidass, 2003; Zahra and Das, 1993), manufacturing resources can be grouped into two major categories, namely manufacturing technologies and lean practices. Manufacturing technologies refer to certain types of technologies such as hardware and computer programs, including computeraided design (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE), computeraided manufacturing (CAM), computer numerical control (CNC) machines, robots, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, whilst lean practices are concerned with manufacturing techniques and know-how such as total quality management (TQM) and just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing.

A number of empirical studies have investigated the effect of manufacturing technologies and lean practices on different measures of operations performance (Swamidass, 2003; Zahra and Das, 1993). However, most of these studies focus on either manufacturing technologies (Beaumont et al., 2002; Kotha and Swamidass, 2000) or lean practices (Cua et al., 2001; Flynn et al., 1995). It is now common for manufacturing firms to adopt both manufacturing technologies and lean practices and therefore, it is important to understand the synergistic effects of manufacturing technologies and lean practices on improving operational performance. However, only few studies (Challis et al., 2002) have brought together the aspects of manufacturing technologies and lean practices into a single study and tested their unique and synergistic effects.

Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) theory and complementarity theory, we argue that combining different resource bundles may result in synergistic effects on operational performance (Jeffers et al., 2008). However, to date, only a few empirical studies have examined the interactive effects of manufacturing technologies and lean practices on multiple dimensions of operational performance. For example, Boyer et al. (1997) examined the interaction between different advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs), which are similar to the manufacturing technologies in this study, and infrastructure on three performance measures, namely growth, profitability, and flexibility. They argued that investments in AMTs are more likely to lead to improved performance, if these are supported by improvements in the manufacturing infrastructure of the company. Boyer et al. (1997) and Zhou et al. (2009) showed the interaction effects of the adoption of AMTs and investments in infrastructure on performance. Swink and Nair (2007) tested the interaction between the usage of AMTs and design-manufacturing integration (DMI) on five dimensions of operational performance. Their findings showed that the interaction effects were positive on quality, delivery, and process flexibility, but not on cost efficiency and new product flexibility. Our study builds on these two studies by testing the interactive effects of manufacturing technologies and lean practices on four major dimensions of operational performance, namely product quality, lead-time, flexibility, and cost. Specifically, we extend the works of Boyer et al. (1997) and Swink and Nair (2007) by expanding the scope of both lean practices and manufacturing operational dimensions.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: first, we develop a set of hypotheses concerning the relationships between manufacturing technologies and lean practices, and their effects on four major operational dimensions of manufacturing performance, namely cost, product quality, lead-time, and flexibility. Then, we present the research methodology and the results of our analysis. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.