Abstract
Globally, the history of the industry has begun a new ground of technological revolution, typically the industrial 4.0" promoted by the German government and the "third industrial revolution" promoted by the United States government. Whatever the concrete manifestation is, the basic idea of the new industry is to build smart factory based on the technology of digitalization and intellectualization and further to reconstitute the production and industry pattern of the manufacturing industry.Especially in recent years, the market of the gloable manufacturing industry has changed profoundly. The requirement of the consumer for the products and services is becoming more and more picky. Which forced the manufacturing enterprises to compress the life cycle of the products to adapt to the rapidly changing market constantly. The really challenge of the manufacturing enterprises is how to produce enough appropriate products that can adapt to different personalized needs of consumers at lower cost. Fortunatlly, the birth of smart factory can become an effective way for the manufacturing industry to deal with these challenges.
The academia and industry has reached consensus that the development of manufacturing industry is an important aspect of china’s economy. It is important for the manufacturing industry to transform from labor-intensive to high-end manufacturing based on high technology. Smart factory can be an engine for China’s economic growth. However, the current situation of the informatization of china’s manufacturing enterprise is not optimistic, there are quite a part of the enterprises that havn’t achieve significant performance improvement through informatization. In this context, the research of smat factory and the mechanism of influence on enterprise performance is of great significance in reality.
Considering the existing literatures, the study on smart factory is not enough. There is no universal measurement index for the smart factory, also, systematic and comprehensive study of the mechanism of influence on enterprise performance is not enough. At the same time, from the perspective of the methods of research model, most scholars have considered the intermediary variable in the role of informationization and enterprise performance relationship, but few scholars studied from the angle of regulating variable.
Under above mentioned theoretical and practical background, the core research question is propsed: What is the influencing mechanism of smart factory on the performance of the firm? Furthermore. We make some suggestions on how to improve the performce of firms though the building of smart factory.
According to above research question, the following questions are explored and argued in the thesis:
First, we discussed the related theories on smart factory, after the theoretical research, the initiative conceptual model is proposed. In this model, Degree of wisdom of the factory has a positive impact on the core capability of enterprise, and core capability has a positive impact on firm performance. That is, core capability has a mediating effect on the relationship between degree of wisdom of the factory and firm performance.
Then, relative literatures about relationships among smart factory, core capability of enterprise and firm performance are unfolded. According to the current study, we divide the degree of wisdom of the factory into five aspects. Core capability is divided into technical ability, market and management ability. Thus, this dissertation tries to study core capability’s mediating effect on the relationship between smart factory and firm performance. what’s more, environmental dynamism is introduced to discuss its moderating effects on the relationship we discussed above. Therefore, relative hypothesises are proposed, and the final conceptual model is formulated by extending above initiative model. In order to test above hypothesises and the final conceptual model, we deliver questionnaire sheets to manufacturing firms, and 186 valid questionnaire sheets are accepted. Using descriptive analysis, assessment of reliability
and validity, correlate analysis, and multivariable regression analysis, valid data is input to test relative hypothesises one by one. The empirical results supports most of hypothesises. At last, we discussed the results.
Based on the analysis, we got four main results.
First, degree of wisdom of the factory has a positive impact on firm performance.
Second, market and management ability has positive impact on the core capability of enterprise.
Third, core capability has a mediating effect on the relationship between degree of wisdom of the factory and firm performance.
Forth, environmental dynamism has moderating effect on the relationship we discussed above.
Theorieal Contributions
After analysis and discussion, 3 theorical contributions are made in this dissertation.
First, we construct a complete theoretical model to test the degree of wisdom of factory, core capability, environmental dynamim and firm performance, which provide a new theory angle of view for the smart factory.
Second, our sduty can help us understand how enterprise intelligence can affect firm performance through core capability. Based on the related theory of informatization and core capability and our empirical test, we comfirmed the mediating effect of core capability.
Third, we proposed a deep discussion about the moderating effect of environmental dynamism on the relationship of smart facotory and firm performance.
| Date of Award | 5 Sept 2016 |
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| Original language | Chinese (Traditional) |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Kwok On Matthew LEE (Supervisor) |