Manufacturing Technology and Operations in China:: A Survey of State-owned Enterprises, Private Firms, Joint Ventures and Wholly-owned Foreign Subsidiaries

The Government of China has decided to privatize many State-owned enterprises (SOEs). Is it wise to consider investing in these SOEs? What is the level of installed technology, from traditional production planning systems, like MRP, to robotics? How different are SOEs from privately-owned firms, joint ventures, and wholly-owned foreign subsidiaries? This paper attempts to answer these questions based on a survey of 120 manufacturing firms in the Shanghai area. We report on the status of, and future plans for, manufacturing technology implementation; and we discuss other improvement initiatives. We report on significant differences among ownership types, and yet we discover that the differences among the ownership types are often insignificant.