Buyer-supplier relationships in firms adopting advanced manufacturing technology: an empirical analysis of the implementation of hard and soft technologies

摘要

Advanced manufacturing technologies can be divided into two types, hard and soft. Hard technologies are biased towards the use of hardware such as robotics while soft technologies, e.g., Total Quality Management, rely more on organisational procedures and management methods. Companies will have had implemented different amounts of these two technology types. An Interactive research framework is developed, proposing that supplier collaboration is more closely Linked to the level of soft technology implementation than to that for hard technology.