It needs not only the price competitive power but the non-price one like quality, design, and delivery to acquire a competitive advantage in the manufacturing industry. Technical ability can make a company have the price and non-price competitive power through improving productivity, quality and developing new products. The basic component for a manufacturing company to acquire a strong competitive advantage in the severe competitive environment is to have the manufacturing technology which can produce a superior product.
Through the manufacturing process investments, the new equipment technology affects the competitive dimensions(quality, cost, delivery, and flexibility), and as a result, a company can obtain the competitive ability. This thesis focuses on finding success/failure factors that affects the performance of manufacturing process investments by studying the investment cases of SDD(Samsung Display Devices Co.,Ltd), a major manufacturer in the braun-tube industry.
The key success factors in the manufacturing process investments were found as follows; acquiring self-technical ability, building a cooperative network with the domestic equipment makers, improving the efficiency of equipment and acquiring the stability of production through automation, introducing multi-functional equipments, improving working environment, using the technical leverage from the existing business when investing in a new business, learning the advanced technology by reverse engineering, improving the core process's conditions, and top exective's concern about acquiring technology. In addition, it is found that over-confidence in technical ability, the lack of preview, indequate coping with the situational change during investment, and the lack of communication between functional departments can lead investments to failure.
The implication of this thesis is to confirm that the manufacturing process investments can directly affect the competitive dimensions and acquiring the manufacturing technology becomes an important component in having the competitive advantage. The limitation of this thesis is that the result of this study is difficult to be generalized by more systematic field survey because the cases are from only one company and the product in growing stage of life-cycle. So, it needs the study of more products in various life-cycle stages and companies to build a new theoretical framework.
