Technology Adoption in Canadian Manufacturing - ARCHIVED

The study of the adoption and dissemination of technologies is one of the key components of innovation and technological development. Indeed, it is through the adoption of newer, more advanced, technologies that industries can increase their production capabilities, improve their productivity, and expand their lines of new products and services. Surveys on the adoption of new technologies complement other information collected about R&D and innovation, allow the measurement of and how quickly and in what way industries adapt to technological change.

This is the fifth Survey of Advanced Technology in the Canadian Manufacturing Sector. Three surveys of advanced manufacturing technologies were conducted in 1987, 1989 and 1993 (which was part of the Survey of Advanced Technology in Canadian Manufacturing), followed by a survey of the use of biotechnology by Canadian industries, conducted in 1997.

Increasingly, manufacturing industries rely on information technology and telecommunications, computerizing and linking all functions of their production process. This survey puts the emphasis on issues such as the use of communication networks, whether internal (e. g. Local Area Networks) or external (e.g. the Internet).