Advanced manufacturing techniques and information technology adoption in India: A current perspective and some comparisons

Abstract

This paper explores the issues of measurement and comparison of the current state of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) adoption in India, including important information technology (IT) factors, and, surprisingly, this appears to be the first such attempt. For a worldwide perspective, comparison is made between Indian firms, firms in a developed country (Canada), and in a developing country (China). Contrary to expectation, the average score of AMT adoption degree of Indian companies in our survey is higher than that of all Canadian companies (when unadjusted for size) and of Chinese companies in one of the highly industrialized regions of China as measured in other surveys. While this suggests considerable strength of the Indian manufacturing sector, there should be further evaluation by other studies in this area to refine and develop these results. This study finds the top six AMTs currently adopted in India are plant certification, computer aided design, local area network, quality circle, MRP/ERP, and wide area network. Clearly four of these top six are directly in the IT area (CAD, LAN, WAN) or directly dependent on it (MRP/ERP systems), indicating a strong IT adoption rate as well as its underlying supportive role in the overall AMT adoption in India. The comparison between Indian firms and Canadian firms indicates that Indian firms adopted computer networks less and MRP/ERP and rapid prototyping systems more. Tests in our survey also reinforce the hypothesis that larger companies are more likely to adopt AMT than the smaller ones.