Developer/Adopter Relationships in the Adoption of CAD/CAM Systems: Implications for Operations Management

The successful development of innovative new CAD/CAM systems is critical to the future viability of many companies. CAD/CAM systems represent one of the fastest growing, highest potential, and riskiest new manufacturing technologies. Successful development and adoption requires much richer and more complex relationships between developing and adopting organisations and between managers in different functional areas and operations management. A framework is developed to identify and outline the implications of changing developer/adopter relationships for operations management, based on three interactive sub‐processes — the development, adoption and interfacing sub‐processes. Eight recommendations are made for operations managers to improve their involvement in developer/adopter relationships and so improve the success of CAD/CAM systems adoption.