Handbook of Management Scales/Advanced manufacturing technology: manufacturing

Description
Research has identified three broad categories of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT): design, manufacturing, and administrative. The measures presented here, based on the initial categorization of Adler (1988), have been used in a variety of research. These measures exist and continue to be used for several reasons. First, these measures have good psychometric properties. The items for each category tend to have very strong reliabilities that have been replicated across multiple studies. In addition there is strong evidence of construct validity because the measures converge and diverge as expected. However, measures such as these that tap the level of investment in a technology as being from low to high suffer from some shortcomings. In particular, the subjective nature of such likert scale items sacrifices a degree of specificity for greater generalizability.

Definition
Manufacturing AMTs are actual production technologies such as flexible manufacturing systems, computer numerical control, and group technology. These manufacturing technologies have been presented as a way to revolutionize the shop floor, to move from economies of scale to economies of scope.

Items
Indicate the amount of investment your manufacturing plant has in the following activities:


 * Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
 * Robotics
 * Real-time process control systems
 * Group technology (GT)
 * Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS)
 * Computerized numerical control machines (CNC)
 * Automated material handling systems
 * Environmental control systems
 * Bar coding/automatic identification

(Likert scale ranging from 1 - no investment, to 4 - moderate investment, to 7 - heavy investment)

Source

 * Boyer/Pagell (2000): Measurement issues in empirical research: improving measures of operations strategy and advanced manufacturing technology. Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 361-374.