Date of Award

Spring 3-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Applied Engineering and Technology Management

First Advisor

Alister McLeod

Abstract

Smart Manufacturing has emerged out of the pervasive buzzwords in publications as a competitive strategy, characterized by the intensive use of digital information and technology throughout the production processes; shop-floor, people, and systems are married by the Internet creating services critical to manufacturing. The work completed and presented here extends the research in the area of Smart Manufacturing (SM) readiness to include a more comprehensive approach to production floor implementation. The overarching goal is to explore SM implementation in attempt to identify underlying latent factors that relate to preparedness from a joint social and technical perspective, striving for a model of readiness. The systematic literature review starts with an exploration of the most widely used maturity models and readiness assessments, identifying the industry accepted dimensions. The literature review also sets the stage for the mixed-methods research framework by concluding that those identified models and assessment instruments are unvalidated and possibly ineffective. The design framework for this mixed-methods study is presented, exploring the underlying inter-related aspects of SM readiness through a sociotechnical lens—workers’ social dimensions and SM technology factors. The research analysis for this study explores the dimensions of the SM readiness through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), using data from a commercial readiness assessment instrument. The EFA process is explained as completed using maximum likelihood extraction method along with Varimax factor rotation. In the end, six (6) factors were found and validated through Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability measures. iv The factors are designated and then related back to the original instrument. The underlying sociotechnical dimensions of SM readiness are associated with those identified in literature, applied against the found factors, building on existing conceptual analysis and frameworks. Ultimately, a new conceptual model of SM readiness is developed and presented, offering a validated instrument with six (6) dimensions that is then processed on the existing dataset resulting in a current look at SM readiness. Finally, additional areas of research are offered that would extend and further bolster the sociotechnical perspective of SM readiness instruments.

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