As described before, companies are now increasingly implementing new manufacturing technology. This has seen an increase in investment in advanced manufacturing technology and indirect costs supporting automation. It is also expected that fixed manufacturing overhead has become a greater portion of total manufacturing costs in the SET listed manufacturing companies. To assess whether the sample companies have became more (or less) capital intensive, a paired t-test will be conducted to test whether the average proportion of fixed manufacturing costs to total manufacturing costs at the beginning of the period studied is significantly different from that at the end of the period studied at the five percent level of confidence when examined in aggregate for the total sample and separately for each of the three industries. It was hypothesized that: