# Simultaneous Use of Digital Technologies and Industrial Robots in Manufacturing Firms
## 3 Research Methodology
### Ems  
EMS is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research--ISI. The main objectives of the EMS project are to study the use of advanced manufacturing and digital technologies, organizational concepts in manufacturing, as well as production and product characteristics. The survey's questions additionally concern manufacturing strategies, cooperation issues, production off-shoring, back-shoring, servitization, and questions of personnel deployment and qualification. In addition, data are collected on performance indicators, such as productivity, flexibility, quality, and returns. The responding firms present a cross-section of the main manufacturing industries. Included are producers of rubber and plastics, metal works, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, textile, and others. The manufacturing firms in our research fall into the following NACE classification divisions:  
22: Manufacture of rubber and plastic products;  
23: Manufacture of other non-metallic mineral products;  
24: Manufacture of basic metals;  
25: Manufacture of fabricated metal products, except machinery and equipment;  
26: Manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products;  
27: Manufacture of electrical equipment;  
28: Manufacture of machinery and equipment n.e.c.;  
29: Manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers, and semi-trailers;  
30: Manufacture of other transport equipment;  
32: Other manufacturing.  
The survey in Slovenia was performed in all of the manufacturing firms within these divisions with at least 20 employees. Our research is based on the EMS data from a Slovenian subsample from the year 2018/19. Around 800 questionnaires were sent, and 118 responses were received, with a 15% response rate. In our 2018/19 subsample, manufacturing firms from NACE divisions 22, 25, and 28 are represented most widely, with around 25% of firms from NACE 25, around 20% from NACE 28, and around 16% from the NACE 22 division. The structure of manufacturing firms based on their size is based on the number of employees. The largest share of respondents was from medium-sized firms (around 42%), and the share of large firms (26%) was quite similar to the small firms' share (32%).  
Figure 1 presents an example of a structural part of a question from EMS 2018 that deals with the diffusion of technologies and represents a core question for all our analysis.  
For each technology, we have asked for the following information:  
* Use of technology (yes/no);
* Use planned in the upcoming period of 3 years (yes/no);  
Figure 1: Question on the use of technologies in EMS 2018.  
* Year in which this technology was used for the first time in your factory (year);
* The extent of actual utilization compared to the most reasonable potential utilization in the factory: Extent of utilized potential, \"low\" for an initial attempt to utilize, \"medium\" for partly utilized, and \"high\" for extensive utilization;
* Upgrade of the already implemented technology (technologies) in the last 3 years--Follow-on investment since 2015 (yes/no);
* In EMS 2018, we divided 16 technologies used in manufacturing firms into 4 groups:
* Production control: digital factory (9 technologies);
* Automation and robotics (2 technologies);
* Additive Manufacturing Technologies (2 technologies);
* Energy efficiency technologies (3 technologies).  
For the purpose of our research, 7 technologies from the \"production control: digital factory\" group were analyzed, and both types of industrial robots from the \"automation and robotics\" group. In the separate technology questions, the use of additional industrial robot types was investigated, such as mobile industrial robots, collaborating robots and autonomous industrial robots.