Assessment of Puerto Rico manufacturing readiness with respect to communication and information technology and its impact on productivity

This work presents a statistically robust assessment to evaluate the use of real-time data collection and reporting systems in the shop-floor of Puerto Rico manufacturers. The survey was published in the Internet with a high response rate that covered five sectors: electronics, electromechanics, medical devices, pharmaceutical and plastics. It can be concluded that less than 50 percent of the companies sampled have some real-time data collection and reporting capabilities. Also the information generated from these systems might not be used effectively due to low line employee involvement. The assessment requested the productivity metrics in use and the results achieved during the years 2000 and 2002. The variety of productivity metrics and the few numeric responses signal that there is little productivity information available. Finally, it was not possible to establish a relation between real-time data collection and reporting and productivity on the shop-floor.