Redefining the Manufacturing Enterprise through Information Technology

This chapter identifies the profound impact of modern information technology on the manufacturing industry. Advanced manufacturing technologies, coupled with organization-wide information systems infrastructures, have offered manufacturing firms tremendous opportunities for sustainable competitive advantages. To fully realize the new technologies’ strategic benefits, however, manufacturing management must both abandon traditional industrial mindsets and redesign manufacturing systems for maximum enterprise integration. Technology is, after all, merely an enabling factor. It requires other corresponding organizational changes to reach its full potential. We, the authors, also introduce current research ideas in the areas of information technology and of manufacturing strategic management.