Developing critical success factor for the assessment of advanced manufacturing technology

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to study and assess the critical success factors that influence the adoption of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMTs), and eventually provide a pre-assessment model for AMT adoption for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to achieve their goals of utilizing AMTs. The study is developed based on previous related studies that focus on critical success factors sub-factors, relationships, and frameworks for AMTs adoption. To reach the objective, this study uses Structural Equation Modeling and Fuzzy Analytic Network Process to assess the relevance of gathered critical success factors and their sub-factors. SEM determines latent and observed variables of interest and assists model validation. Questionnaire interviews were distributed to 63 companies, representing small-level (35%), medium-level (48%), and enterprise-level (17%) firms. A total of 212 samples were gathered and grouped based on department (e.g., production, maintenance, management, or purchasing). The results indicate that strategy was the most important factor for the adoption of AMTs, followed by organization, top management, technology, and environment respectively. Hence, nine experts who consist of management, top management of successful implementation company are investigated to find the weight score of the pre-assessment model by using Fuzzy Analytic Network. The proposed pre-assessment model consists of these 5 critical success factors, which allows SMEs to evaluate their readiness for the adoption of AMTs.