This project provides theoretical and econometric methods for analyzing how advanced information technologies, and the structures of the organizations using them, affect the performance of modern, complex, industrial production facilities. The research focusses upon the productivity and reliability of established production facilities, and its ultimate aim is to assess the impacts of new technologies for process monitoring and control upon these two quantitative dimensions of performance. The research agenda has three elements. First, it aims to advance the analysis of production systems by examining the choices of techniques for process control and organizational design that would promote improvement sin reliability and productivity via more extensive uses of sophisticated information technology. Second, it proposes novel formulations of production theory that relate more directly to empirical observations of micro level production events. Third, the project undertakes to test the usefulness of its conceptual and methodological researches by applying these concretely, in a study of organizational and information-technology impacts on the performance of an economically important and exceptionally well-documented industry--commercial nuclear power plants operated by U.S. electric utility companies.
