Empirical study on technology management in medium-sized manufacturing companies

Abstract

As management resources of the company, generally people, goods, money (capital) has been called that three elements of the management. Appropriate investment and its efficient use to these resources have been sought to management. Further information as a fourth element has been added recently. In this paper, furthermore, for the medium-sized manufacturing company that manufactures and sells the product with long life as mechanical elements, “outward activities ” are proposed as the fifth element to add to the above four management elements. The importance of these five management elements, are different by market needs and corporate scale and strategy. So, the key method to evaluate importance of the technology management is discussed systematically for mid-sized manufacturing company's management on the basis of these management elements. In the technology management system are classified into three layers, and the evaluation factors based on the management elements in each layer are composed by a tree structure. The first layer is defined as the important key factor, the second layer is defined as the theme to raise the quality of the first layer and the third layer is defined as the theme judged on site objectively. Intended for mid-sized manufacturing company that manufactures and sells the Universal Joint, which is one of the mechanical elements product for the proposed technology management system was performed out as case study. As a result, the effectiveness of the proposed five elements and technology management were verified. Also, in this case study, it's also done clearly about how various innovation is classified by technological management, and how product innovation and process innovation also influence technological management.