Analysis and Design of a Strategic Technology Development Program for Small Scale Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

In today’s competitive business environment, global competition is forcing companies to perpetually seek ways to improve their products and services. Technological changes and demanding customers are creating a more knowledge intensive, turbulent, complex, and uncertain environment. The intense competition requires that firms excel simultaneously in several areas without trade-off, including innovativeness and responsiveness to their customers. These formidable changes have forced the organizations around the world to adopt innovative and state of the art strategies to suitably address the all-important issues of organizational growth and excellence. It is high time that industries wake up and gear up for research initiatives to develop cutting edge technologies. Amongst the several problems faced by small scale manufacturing organizations in the country, technology obsolescence is one major predicament. There has been a lack of any organized attempt to understand how technology upgradation activities are being carried out in the Indian small scale sector. The objective of present research work is to analyze the indigenous technology development capabilities of small scale manufacturing industry and develop a strategic technology development program for the same. The work has been carried out under the overall framework of ‘Flexible Systems Methodology’. The research problem has been conceptualized as a SAP-LAP (Situation-Actor-Process; Learnings-Action-Performance) paradigm. In this framework, the ‘situation’ aspect comprises of the present industrial situation in small scale manufacturing sector, whereas manufacturing organizations constitute the ‘actor’ aspect. The role of in-house research and innovation initiatives in building technological capabilities constitutes the ‘process’. The work has been carried out in four distinct phases. The first phase comprises of an extensive literature review concerning economic, technical, regulatory and other related issues regarding technology development capabilities of manufacturing industry. The second phase assesses the status of technology development initiatives and resulting performance improvements in the industrial sector, through a questionnaire based survey of manufacturing units. This phase consists of questionnaire development, its validation and pre-testing, sampling and data collection. It is followed by descriptive and empirical analysis of data to assess the status of various research issues and evaluate the interrelationships between dependent and independent research constructs. The statistical tools used in this phase of work include t-test, canonical factor loading analysis and multiple regression analysis. The third phase of research work describes the detailed case studies carried out in manufacturing organizations, which are actors in the present context. The objective of case studies has been to look into and critically analyze various facets of the working of organizations, including the need for technology development, the role of technology input success factors and resulting developments accrued as a result thereof. In each case study, the techniques and approaches adopted by organizations for technological improvements, success achieved and modifications made in future plans have been compiled and analyzed in detail. The main tools used in case studies have been SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, SAP (Situation, Actors, Process) interplay, and LAP (Learnings, Actions, Performance) synthesis. The case studies have been conducted at Super Hobs and Broaches Private Limited, Patiala and; Pye Hand Tools Private Limited, Ludhiana. The last phase of research work presents a synthesis of learning issues of survey and case studies to bring out a systematic implementation plan for effectively managing technology input success factors for performance improvements in the manufacturing sector. For this, a qualitative modeling technique has been applied using options field methodology (OFM), options profile methodology (OPM), analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy set theory (FST). Five main profiles have been planned in this phase of work to meet various dimensions of the research problem. These profiles include strategic stimulation based approach, technology based approach, regulatory environment based approach, nucleus based approach and a mixed approach. The actions for implementation of various strategies in the manufacturing sector have been recommended through the qualitative model. Finally, a conceptual framework showing the preferred strategies to meet the objectives of research problem in the Indian context has been developed, presented and discussed.