Abstract—The market place of the 21st century is evolving into one of merging national markets, fragmented consumer markets, and rapidly changing product technologies and so the use of new technologies has become vital to the manufacturing industry for their survival and sustainability. This work focused on the assembly type industry in a small developing country and aimed at identifying the use of advanced manufacturing technologies and their impact on this sector of the industry. It was found that some technologies were being used and that they had improved the effectiveness of those companies. Some of the specific advantages highlighted were improved productivity and thus improved efficiency, improved flexibility, more consistency in the production and quality improvements in the products. It was however noted that there was still room for improvement. Some of the recommendations included benchmarking against international standards, the adoption of a “made in TT” campaign and the effective utilisation of the technologies to improve competitive advantages and strategies.
Index Terms—Advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), Trinidad and Tobago (TT), assembly sector.
Nadine Sangster, Rondell Duke, Prakash Persad, and Aaron Ameerali are with Design and Manufacturing Engineering, the University of Trinidad and Tobago, Boulder, O’Meara Industrial Estate, ARIMA, Trinidad and Tobago (e-mail: nadine.sangster@utt.edu.tt).
Terrence Lalla is with the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago (e-mail: terrence.lalla@sta.uwi.edu).
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Cite: Nadine Sangster, Rondell Duke, Terrence Lalla, Prakash Persad, and Aaron Ameerali, "Investigating the Use of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies in the Manufacturing Assembly Sector in a Small Developing Country," International Journal of Materials, Mechanics and Manufacturing vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 266-272, 2016.
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