The main objective of this study is to identify the influencing factors on the success or failure of the implementation of CAD/CAM system, and auxiliarily to analyze the relationship between firm's strategy and the implementation process. Based on the review of relavant literature in the similar areas of CAD/CAM, i.e. MIS, OR/MS, etc., A set of hypotheses are derived. The model contains four independent variables on success which are user traing, system capacity, vender's marketing capability, and managerial support. And the model contains five strategy-related variables, which are the purpose of system implementation, changing process, initial usage, usage increase and development.
Data are collected through interviews and mail questionnaires from 50 systems. Sample firms are engaged in electronics, machinery, plant engineering, service, apparel industries.
The statistical techniques used in this study are Kendall's tau correlation, chi-square test, t-test. The important findings of this study are as follows.
1. The better the user training is, the higher the probability of success in the GAD/CAM system is.
2. The total cost of system is related to the user's satisfaction, and the marketing capability of system vandor is related to the financial success.
3. The initial usage of the leading innovative firms are lower than those of the following innovative firms but the later usage becomes higher.
4. The leading innovative firms are more active in development activity.
Further research would be necessary to extend the research field and to validate the research questions on wider sample bases.
