Industrial practice in technology planning - Implications for a useful tool catalogue for technology management

A survey on technology planning and its implications for a useful tool catalogue for technology management was conducted. The survey provided a picture of technology planning, across a broad range of company size, manufacturing type and sector. It was concluded from the findings that technology planning is an important business activity across industry sectors and company types, driven increasing competition, market requirements and regulation technology change. The process technology roadmapping was used to support technology strategy and planning and could be useful way of structuring both the use of tools in a company and a tool catalogue.

Characterisation of technology roadmaps: Purpose and format

A report on characterisation of technology roadmaps, its purpose and formats are presented. A fast-start process is developed to support the initiation of technology roadmapping in firms to address the industrial needs. The purpose of each roadmap is related to a number of planning aims: product, capability, integration, strategic, long-range, programme and process planning. The second set of categories are related to the format of the roadmap, based on observed structure: multiple or single layers, bars, tables, graphs, pictorial forms, flow diagrams and text. It is concluded that technology roadmaps processes a great potential for supporting the development and implementation of business product and technology strategy.

Make or buy: understanding the impact of technology choices

This paper identifies the significance of make or buy issues for manufacturing industry, and positions the question as central to manufacturing strategy. The key importance of technology assessment in formulating a make or buy strategy is examined, together with some practical techniques for making this assessment. Finally the issues of managing the technology base of a business are reviewed, and current research aimed at facilitating this task is described.

Advanced DC link capacitor technology application for a stiff voltage-source inverter

Problem of DC link size in a stiff voltage-source inverter for electric drive is described in the paper. Advantages of advanced film capacitor technology over conventional one for DC link application are reviewed. Conventional DC link capacitor selection methods are questioned in view of advanced capacitor technology utilization in stiff voltage-source inverter. For capacitor selection maximum ripple rms current point is shown. DC link ripple current spectrum analysis under modern PWM techniques is presented. Some capacitor selection recommendations are given. The analysis has been aided greatly by computer modeling in PSpice. ©2005 IEEE.

Millisecond processing beyond chip technology: From electronics to photonics

There is a clear and increasing interest in short time annealing processing far below one second, i.e. the lower limit of Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) called spike annealing. This was driven by the need of suppressing the so-called Transient Enhanced Diffusion in advanced boronimplanted shallow pn-junctions in silicon technology. Meanwhile the interest in flash lamp annealing (FLA) in the millisecond range spread out into other fields related to silicon technology and beyond. This paper reports on recent experiments regarding shallow junction engineering in germanium, annealing of ITO layers on glass and plastic foil to form an conductive layer as well as investigations which we did during the last years in the field of wide band gap semiconductor materials (SiC, ZnO). A more common feature evolving from our work was related to the modeling of wafer stress during millisecond thermal processing with flash lamps. Finally recent achievements in the field of silicon-based light emission basing on Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Light Emitting Devices will be reported. © 2007 IEEE.

Value roadmapping: A structured approach for early stage technology investment decisions

Deciding to invest in early stage technologies is one of the most important tasks of technology management and arguably also the most uncertain. It assumes a particular significance in the rise of technology companies in emerging economies, which have to make appropriate investment decisions. Technology managers already have a wide range of methods and tools at their disposal, but these are mostly focussed on quantitative measures such as discounted cash flow and real options techniques. However, in the early stages of technology development there seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction with these techniques as there appears to be a lack of accuracy with respect to the underlying assumptions that these models require. In order to complement these models this paper will discuss an alternative approach that we call value road-mapping. By adapting roadmapping techniques the potential value streams of early stages technologies can be plotted and hence a clearer consensus based picture of the future potential of new technologies emerges. Roadmapping is a workshop-based process bringing together multifunctional perspectives, and supporting communication in particular between technical and commercial groups. The study is work in progress and is based on a growing number of cases. (c) 2006 PICMET.

Addressing the cognitive and social influence inhibitors during the ideation stages of technology roadmapping workshops

Technology roadmapping workshops are essentially a social mechanism for exploring, creating, shaping and implementing ideas. The front-end of a roadmapping session is based on brainstorming in order to tap into the group's diverse knowledge. The aim of this idea stimulation activity is to capture and share as many perspectives as possible across the full scope of the area of interest. The premise to such group brainstorming is that the sharing and exchange of ideas leads to cognitive stimulation resulting in a greater overall group idea generation performance in terms of the number, variety and originality of ideas. However, it must be recognized that the ideation stage in a roadmapping workshop is a complex psychosocial phenomenon with underlying cognitive and social processes. Thus, there are downsides to group interactions and these must be addressed in order to fully benefit from the power of a roadmapping workshop. This paper will highlight and discuss the key cognitive and social inhibitors involved. These include: production blocking, evaluation apprehension, free riding/social loafing, low norm setting/matching. Facilitation actions and process adjustments to counter such negative factors will be identified so as to provide a psychosocial basis for improving the running of roadmapping workshops. © 2009 PICMET.