The impact of advanced manufacturing technologies and job-skill requirements on employee job productivity working in Saudi Arabia petrochemical industry

Over the past few years many developed countries (e.g., U.S. and U.K.) and many developing countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia) have noted a growing concern about the future of their manufacturing bases. The need to improve their productivity and the creation of a skilled labor force prompted these countries to undertake a major restructuring of their production processes by introducing advanced manufacturing technologies, and changing and adopting new training and retraining programs.;Therefore, the problem now appears to be one of coping with those changes, as such rapidly changing technological advances had an impact on the workforce job-skill requirements, which in turn impacted employees' overall productivity. We should be concerned about defining our skill requirement needs and technologies clearly so people within and outside the organization understood what we want to achieve.;This study tested several hypotheses concerning the impact of fit between selected advanced manufacturing technologies and job skill requirements on the productivity of employees working in Saudi Arabia's petrochemical industry. These different relationships were tested using the moderated regression analysis technique. A survey instrument was developed to collect the necessary data from employees working at SABIC petrochemical plants (Saudi Arabia). A pilot study was designed to test these different relationships and was carried out in Summer 1992. The actual study was conducted in Fall 1992 after the data of the pilot study had been collected and analyzed.;A total of twenty hypotheses and sub-hypotheses stated for this study were tested and interaction effects were examined. Overall, the interaction of selected advanced manufacturing technologies and job skills is positively related to the workers' job productivity. However, by disaggregating the level of analysis based on how the interaction between selected types of advanced manufacturing and job skills on job productivity of different groups of workers (e.g., engineers, technicians, operators, and administrators), a much better assessment of this effect was obtained.;Based on the findings and conclusions of this study different recommendations were presented.