Assessing Operations Readiness for Technology Upgradation in MSME-based Bakery Industries of Barak Valley, North-East India: An Empirical Study

The micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME)-based bakery industry in North-East India faces significant operational constraints, including limited mechanisation, restricted access to institutional funding, an underdeveloped packaging supply chain infrastructure and a near-complete absence of specialised technical support. These constraints are particularly pronounced in the Barak Valley region of Southern Assam. No prior empirical study has measured enterprise-level operations readiness for technology upgradation in this geography. The present study adopts a mixed descriptive-exploratory research design and applies an Operations Readiness Framework to assess readiness across four dimensions: structural, technological, market and environmental. Secondary data on all 390 registered bakery units across Barak Valley were sourced from the District Industries and Commerce Centre. Primary survey data were collected from 33 verified operational bakery enterprise owners in the Cachar district through structured face-to-face interviews. Two hypotheses examine whether enterprise scale significantly determines product innovation frequency and product variety among MSME-based bakery enterprises in the Cachar district. Results confirm that scale significantly determines both innovation frequency ( χ ² = 8.393, df = 1, p = .004) and product variety (Mann–Whitney U = 33.5, p = .023). All small-scale bakery enterprises add new products every 6 months or at least once a year, while 74.1% of micro-scale units do so only occasionally or never. Small-scale bakeries also produce significantly more distinct product items per category, with a mean variety depth score of 3.67 compared to 2.52 for micro-scale units. However, given that only six small-scale enterprises were included in the sample, these comparative findings should be interpreted with appropriate caution. The complete absence of fully automated bakery units across the surveyed enterprises is the most significant operational finding. The study concludes that market readiness exists at the micro scale in product breadth but remains underdeveloped in innovation frequency and variety depth, while structural and environmental readiness constitute the binding constraints on technology upgradation in the Cachar district. Findings are primarily applicable to micro-scale proprietorship-run bakery enterprises in the Cachar district; generalisation to the broader Barak Valley region should be made with caution pending full valley-wide data collection.