Accelerating smart manufacturing technology adoption: an interdependency perspective on technology adoption

Adopting smart manufacturing technology (SMT) is critical for the intelligent transformation of manufacturing enterprises. However, an inappropriate SMT adoption (SMTA) path will lead to negligible economic benefits, which seriously restricts intelligent transformation. Using a combined network method based on the Grey-DEMATEL and social network analysis, this paper considers SMTA as a system and identifies the importance of individual SMTA. Firstly, the SMTA network is constructed by identifying 16 SMTs and calculating the interdependencies among individual SMTA. The results show that the SMTA system has a relatively high level of interdependency. The important rankings of SMTs are obtained by single and combined indicators. The roles of SMTA are divided into amplifier, absorber, carrier and neutral. Amplifiers play an important role in the adoption of other SMTs and the paths that successively pass through amplifiers can accelerate the whole SMTA. This paper provides a valuable contribution to SMTA theory from a technological interdependency perspective. This new perspective provides a foundation for designing SMTA paths for manufacturing enterprises and entire industries.