تاثیر تصویب تولید انعطاف پذیر فناوری در بهره وری از صنعت ساخت مالزی

This paper investigates the influence of the adoption of Flexible Manufacturing Technology (FMT) on the Total factor Productivity Growth (TFPG) of Malaysia Manufacturing Industry. The Principal Component Analysis has been adopted to extract the most appropriate underlying dimensions of FMT to use in place of the eight FMT variables owing to the potential multicollinearity. The study has been conducted within FMT intensively adopted 16 three-digit industries that encompass 50 five-digit industries covering the years 2000–2005. The results obtained from the two situations, one, including the industry fixed effects dummy variables and the other without these, are contrasted. It is established that the model that included the industry fixed effect dummy variables has a greater explanatory power. The two principal components that account for the greater variation in FMT show positive and moderately significant relationship with TFPG. The study provides sufficient evidence to conclude that FMT has a direct and moderately significant relationship with TFPG.

The average gross domestic product (GDP) growth of Malaysia (5.5%) during 2000–2007 is lower than that (7.0) during 1990–2000. Malaysian Manufacturing sector GDP (13.0%) during 2000–2007 is much lower than the same (4.8%) for the period 1990–2000. These are some of the key indicators to the declining competitiveness of the Malaysian manufacturing industry over the period 2000–2007. It is widely believed that intensive regimes of contemporary manufacturing paradigms such as mass customisation, customerisation and instant customerisation can pave the way for a competitive manufacturing industry. The studies show that mass customisation is the core manufacturing paradigm. The studies also showed that the crucial determinant of the successful implementation of mass customisation is the abundant use of Flexible manufacturing Technology (FMT) (Wind and Rangaswamy, 2001 and Da Silveria and Fogliatto, 2005).

The objective of this paper was to evaluate the influence of the degree of adoption of Flexible Manufacturing Technology on the productivity of the manufacturing industry of Malaysia. The types of Flexible Manufacturing Technology considered are namely, Computer Numerical Control Machine Tools, Numerical Controlled Machine Tools, Robotics, Programmable Logic Controllers, Automated Inspections, Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems, Computer Aided Design and Local Area Networks. The presence of multicollinearity among the eight types of Flexible Manufacturing Technology necessitated the use of three PCs to substitute the individual Flexible Manufacturing Technology variables. The Flexible Manufacturing Technology variables load onto PCs as follows: Local Area Networks, Computer Aided Design, Programmable Logic Controllers and Computer Numerical Control Machine Tools load onto PC1; Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems, Automated Inspections and Robotics load onto PC2 and Numerical Controlled Machine Tools only loads onto PC3. The three Principal Components (PCs) were labelled so that they best describe their respective constituents; PC1-‘process control’ technologies, PC2-‘production and quality control’ technologies and the PC3-‘general control’ technology.