Performance analysis of high technology collaborative networks: A case of medical device manufacturing

Technological advancements, potential cost savings and quest for better ways of treating the medical problems have given rise to a new kind of manufacturing environment. This environment is characterized by enhanced competencies involving user experience based creations, co-innovation, sharing resources and use of advanced technologies in a networking mode. The paper presents a cluster of enterprises evolved as a High Technology Collaborative Network (HTCN) to envisage affordable manufacturing of a medical device. The paper makes several contributions (i) quantifies the tie strength among the enterprises of the HTCN (ii) determines agent and network level measures for studying the pattern of collaborative relationships (iii) demonstrates performance analysis of a real life case of HTCN (iv) performs structural investigations of the HTCN and states various implications at operational and strategic level. We identify various hard and soft factors to quantify the collaborative relationships and construct the social network. The proposed methodology is helpful in analysing the performance and effective management of the network.