Purpose

While manufacturing digitalization is currently considered an important enabler of competitive advantage, its applicability across the industrial spectrum is unclear. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the use of digital technologies and different production environments and company sizes. The focus is on three aspects of digitalization: shop floor digitalization, technologies for vertical and horizontal integration and organizational IT competence.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on data gathered from a survey questionnaire sent to 212 Norwegian manufacturing companies. To test the formulated hypotheses, the two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) method was used.

Findings

This study confirmed that large enterprises (LEs) have a significantly higher level of shop floor digitalization and organizational IT competence than small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Regarding the difference between production environments, no statistically significant difference in the implementation level of the investigated digitalization aspects could be found.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first studies to investigate differences in the adoption of digital technologies between different groups of production environments. This study also provides updated findings related to the relationship between digitalization and company size. The findings presented in this paper provide important insights into directing future research efforts to assist environments that are currently lagging behind in their digital transformation.

中文翻译：

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制造业数字化：调查生产环境和公司规模的影响

目的

尽管制造业数字化目前被认为是获得竞争优势的重要推动力，但其在整个工业领域的适用性尚不清楚。本文旨在研究数字技术的使用与不同生产环境和公司规模之间的关系。重点是数字化的三个方面：车间数字化，纵向和横向集成技术以及组织IT能力。

设计/方法/方法

这项研究基于从发送给212家挪威制造公司的调查问卷中收集的数据。为了检验提出的假设，使用了方差双向分析（ANOVA）方法。

发现

这项研究证实，大型企业（LE）的车间数字化水平和组织IT能力要明显高于中小型企业（SME）。关于生产环境之间的差异，在调查的数字化方面的实施水平上没有发现统计学上的显着差异。

创意/价值

据作者所知，这是调查不同生产环境组之间数字技术采用差异的首批研究之一。这项研究还提供了有关数字化与公司规模之间关系的最新发现。本文介绍的发现为指导未来的研究工作提供了重要的见识，以帮助当前在数字化转型方面落后的环境。