The Role of Technology Management in Strategic Manufacturing Decision Making

Recent research has focused on identifying the position and role of technology management in strategic manufacturing decision making. This research presents the findings of a major investigation of the role of technology management in the Australian wine industry. This industry was chosen because it has a major focus on the use of advanced process technology as part of its manufacturing competitive positioning. In particular, technology management is used to maximise product quality and reduce production costs. Plant and equipment were identified as the most important area of manufacturing process decision making, followed by quality assurance and control. It also found that quality is the most important competitive priority for wine producers, followed by product cost. Both of these were found to be directly influenced by process technology in the form of plant and equipment. The competitive priority of rate of innovation, although also likely to be influenced by technology management, was found to be much less important (rated in 7th position, out of 10 identified competitive priorities). Integration of technology with the process was also identified as being a much less important decision area than plant and equipment (rated 16th, out of 23 identified manufacturing decision areas). An ANOVA determined that there were 32 categories of wine producers for which there were significant differences in the importance of plant and equipment (P<0.05). The relative importance ranking of plant and equipment varied between the most important to being the third most important out of the 23 decision areas identified for the 32 categories of wine producer identified. A factor analysis determined that technology management is related to capacity management in terms of its strategic positioning in the manufacturing decision making process. They were found to form part of the manufacturing decision making process, but were not part of the strategic business decision making process.