This paper summarizes the efforts for drawing up long-range roadmaps that were undertaken by the Transdisciplinary Federation of Science and Technology (TRAFST) during the 2007 fiscal year as one of its key activities. Four basic roadmaps were completed by the dedicated working groups, each consisting of scientists and engineers with different backgrounds from different member societies of the TRAFST, and these are briefly introduced in this paper. Additional roadmaps corresponding to the three items of the 2005 Nagano Declaration issued by the TRAFST are also shown.

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In this report, we will show our attempt to draw an academic roadmap in the fields of systems, management and control. In our Phase 1, we used C-Plan, which is proposed by METI, to draw a roadmap. We found that C-Plan is useful for the communication among different fields of science and technologies, but it is difficult to draw a time-scaled roadmap for trans-disciplinary fields. Thus, as our Phase 2, we drew a roadmap based on the specified time-scaled key factors in trans-disciplinary fields: “Increasing Complexity” and “Measurements and Visualization.”

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This paper describes the summary of the academic roadmap discussed by the working group. It is anticipated that the region of the simulation will expand infinitely and the simulation will be used for the extensive research. Thus, it was examined a vista of the future by dividing into eight regions.

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It has become increasingly clear that a coming ubiquitous society consisting of people’s everyday life, production activities, etc. is governed through integration of human and artifacts including various automated machines and information technologies. Wherein, the ecological and evolutional prospects brought about by the interactions of many subsystems are to be argued. This article describes the summary of the discussions on an academic roadmap by the members of the working group on Creating New Society through Innovations of Human Interface. The future societies enabled by the development of interface technologies are predicted, and key issues for realizing a truly sustainable society and human-oriented technology are presented.

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This paper summarizes an academic roadmap for production engineering, which is globally called Monodzukuri in Japan. This roadmap was completed by a dedicated working group, consisting of scientists and engineers with different backgrounds from different member societies of the TRAFST. The paper deals with scenarios of production systems in 2040 and their necessary technologies. A key concept in future may be “prosumers,” i.e., the fusion of producers and consumers. The technical roadmap is generated to represent the technical progress up to 2040.

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Quality Management was developed from TQC of the second generation into TQM of the third generation in the first half of 1990’s. A new concept of not only the quality of the product and service but also quality of management which produces them, that is, the management quality is created, and TQM has aimed at maintenance and the improvement of the management quality there. For this, it is necessary to evaluate management quality adequately, and to solve the extracted problem. The management assessment theory and the technique under such a background were developed. This article reviews the existing management assessment theory and introduces new self-assessment method of management quality developed by the author.

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Ergonomics is defined as “the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among human and other elements of a system.” The main goal of ergonomics is to design a system as human-centered manner, and to evaluate it from the view point of safety, health and wellbeing of human being considering with the efficiency of the system. One of the most important concepts of ergonomics is man-machine interface that made it possible to analyze the interaction between human and machines. Japan Ergonomics Society was founded in 1964 and became an important member of International Ergonomics Association, and now its activities are extended to ISO/TC159, certification of professional ergonomist, etc. The society will act toward development of useful science and technology and of social awareness of ergonomics.

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This document introduces Japan Society of Kansei Engineering (JSKE) established on October 9, 1998. Kansei engineering is a new academic area, and it is a cross-road of interdisciplinary research. In fact, academic members of the society are specialized in such diverse fields as philosophy, education, psychology, art, politics, economy, management, natural science, medicine, physiology, chemistry, materials, mechanical engineering, information, system science, and so forth. In the framework of individual researchers, it is the role of this academic society to offer a place to discuss a common objective of contributing the society by discovering and using values of Kansei based on individual results achieved from their own aspects. This academic society unites a wide range of study areas without being caught in the restriction of conventional categories such as cultural sciences, social sciences, and natural sciences. It promotes a new meta-science and technology of Kansei engineering.

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