The use and impact of technology in factory environments: evidence from a survey of manufacturing industry in Spain

The aim of this paper is to examine information related to the implementation of shop floor technologies and information technologies. This will be complemented with data relating to different levels of usage of the technologies. In addition, we test whether implementation alone is able to improve company performance or whether a high level of usage is also important. The empirical evidence comes from a sample of 151 Spanish manufacturing companies surveyed according to the European Manufacturing Survey's methods in 2006. Our results show that the most widely adopted technology is computer-aided design (CAD), followed by enterprise resource planning (ERP) and industrial robots. When the focus is on the level of use, the most highly used technologies turn out to be very similar-CAD-computer-aided manufacturing, ERP, and industrial robots-. Multiple regression analysis shows a positive correlation between the variable level of usage and performance. The relationship between adoption and results is less strong. These results have some implications and the paper ends with an explanation of how these findings should be used by firms in the development of future policies or strategic plans.