Current and future patterns of using advanced manufacturing technologies

This article records the findings from the survey about the pattern of current uses and future tendency of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMT). The empirical data come from the project International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) which covers 18 countries. It was found that CAD, MRP, LAN, and CNC machines are the most popular AMTs used now. It seems that there is a sequence of adopting AMT, namely from simple to complicated. Green field and fully-integrated CIM systems seem to be rare. In three years, the uses of CAPP and shared database will significantly increase, which indicate the increase in integration level of manufacturing system. However, the main configuration of manufacturing will be stand-alone, islands of automation, and limited integration. Fully computerised integration in manufacturing system will unlikely be the main model in the near future. Regarding the relationship between AMT uses and performance improvement seems to be complicated and a couple of different patterns. are identified. Practical implications, limitations and future research are also discussed finally. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.