Production technology selection: Deploying market requirements, competitive and operational strategies, and manufacturing attributes

Abstract

The success and survival of companies are becoming increasingly difficult to ensure in this era of increasing competition and ever-changing environments. Modern technology is playing a key role in the ability of manufacturing companies to compete as world-class enterprises. Therefore, new manufacturing technologies are needed to assist in compressing the production time to move products to the market more quickly and efficiently than competitors. Acquiring and implementing new technologies are perceived as high-risk investments and determinants of competition. To ensure that a selected technology meets these requirements, companies should simultaneously explore and communicate the relationships between evolving and developing markets, as well as competitive and operational strategies over time. However, the published literature on new technology selection hitherto has failed to sufficiently address the relevant perspectives in such analyses. The relationship matrix in the quality function deployment (QFD) method provides an excellent tool for aligning important concepts and linking processes. This report suggests an operational strategy for the selection of a new production technology that integrates the market trends, competitive and operational strategies, as well as manufacturing attributes by using the relationship matrix in the QFD method and also describes how this robust approach has been applied to the selection of new manufacturing technology in a Taiwanese company. This selection substantiates our assertion that the proposed framework and procedures do in fact meet the real requirements of an individual commercial entity as well as ensuring a competitive edge.

Keywords:

• new technology selection
• operational strategy
• relationship matrix
• quality function deployment (QFD)
• manufacturing attributes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express appreciation to Dr Cheryl Rutledge, Department of English, Da-Yeh University, for her editorial assistance, the company managers for their cooperation and the National Science Council of Taiwan for its financial support (NSC 96-2221-E-212-005).