中小型傳統製造企業導入智能製造之評估模型和應用﹕以運動鞋製造企業為例

Abstract

Many years ago, the concept of smart manufacturing was proposed by the United States and Europe being leading in advanced manufacturing. Today, to implement smart manufacturing has attracted widespread attention from the global manufacturing and gradually becomes the trend of industry. For example, Industry 4.0 advocated by Germany, the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Program of the United States, Japan Industry 4.1J and Made in China 2025, all the them are important plans related to smart manufacturing.

Smart manufacturing, based on the environment of intranet/internet and IoT, was equipped with automated machines to utilize product-related parameters and data in high performance production. By the system about Smart manufacturing, the information of value chain, from design to mass production as well as marketing and sales, can be seamlessly transmitted and integrated. Coupled with advanced edge computing and artificial intelligence technologies, the management and decision-making systems of enterprises with smart manufacturing will be able to fully demonstrate the operational advantages that smart manufacturing brings to the organization.

The sports shoe manufacturing is traditional. Its production generally relies on a large number of skilled laborers collaborating to complete the tasks. Therefore, the industrial chain of the sports shoe manufacturing has always been located at the countries or regions with sufficient labor supply. The industry keeps pace with the times, and the principal brands, such as NIKE and adidas, play key roles in actively promoting industrial upgrading. To meet the needs of end consumers, these international brands hope to implement smart manufacturing to drive the supply chain to develop in the direction of novel product design and production technology innovation.

Unlike other industries with more advanced processes, referring to the international standards and their classifications related to smart manufacturing, the levels of smart manufacturing in most of sports shoe manufacturing are still at very early stages. These industry players had been witnessing the failure of brands in executing smart manufacturing in the past. Today, they are facing the challenges from external industrial changes and competitive pressures. When reviewing internal production technology and financial support, they may be hesitant about whether to carry out smart manufacturing.

We observed the above phenomenon and found that there is no relevant research on this research topic, so we embarked on this research. We look forward to providing a decision-making framework to assist sports shoe manufacturing companies to clearly analyze their current discussion on whether to perform smart manufacturing and understand whether it is qualified or mature enough to promote the project about smart manufacturing. In this paper, the AHP decision-making model will be elaborated and discussed in detail, from both benefit/positive and cost/negative perspectives of Benefit-Cost Analysis. Meanwhile, the key factors in AHP, under TOE theoretical framework plus cost aspect, are collected from related literature and provided by industry experts. This study pursues the accuracy of survey data and abandons the traditional method of issuing questionnaires. Instead, it conducts interviews and questionnaires on the above content with relevant scholars and industry experts. At the same time, in order to verify the "Introduction of Smart Manufacturing Decision Evaluation Model" developed by this research, actual cases and projects will be introduced for verification. Moreover, according to the results of verification, further analysis and strategic suggestions are provided to ensure the feasibility and effectiveness of this research.

Date of Award	27 Feb 2024
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Gang HAO (Supervisor) & Youwei Wang (External Supervisor)