Taxonomy of information technology adoption patterns in manufacturing firms

摘要

The aim was to explore the adoption of information technology (IT) by manufacturing firms. We identified where in the immediate supply chain IT has been adopted and explored the issues and benefits reported by the adopting firms. To move beyond case-specific examples prevalent in prior research, we chose to use a written survey, which was targeted at US manufacturing facilities. By employing both hierarchical and non-hierarchical cluster analysis on the 165 responses relative to five product flow positions within the firm, a taxonomy of five distinct IT adoption profiles was created and validated. Although the results indicated that the profiles were similar relative to demographic information (e.g. manufacturing process type) and top competitive priorities (e.g. on-time delivery, quick response, realistic schedules), the profiles differed relative to application utilization, application integration with a computer-based scheduling system (e.g. module of an ERP system) and reported benefits. Further, from the taxonomy an adoption orientation matrix was derived, analysed and then discussed in the context of profile progression to full adoption of the applications. Several propositions are presented and implications for future operations management research identified.