This paper describes expectations for Transdisciplinary Federation of Science and Technology viewed from manufacturing industry. Challenges of manufacturing industry in terms of transdisciplinary technology are presented ranging from problem oriented approaches to design methodology, and some preliminary practices are demonstrated including visualization by sensor network and analysis-led design. Manufacturing industry has been starting integration of diversified knowledge in order to respond to real world requirements, but the integration experiences are scarcely reusable. For better transformation of the integration experiences to reusable knowledge, which is one of the essential values of transdisciplinary technology, collaboration of academia, government, and industry in real situations is strongly desired as well as providing appropriate education for knowledge integration at universities.

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With the advent of the Internet, customers now possess more information and knowledge on products and market than producers. This new supplier-customer relationship reflects a fundamental structural change from supply-push to demand-pull economy and is becoming more and more prevalent. Traditional company-centered strategies based on product and process innovation will now be unable to capture the market share as high as companies may have expected. Having said that customers are better informed, more professionalized and more closely interconnected in the network community, marketing paradigm should be remodeled to flexibly co-create new needs and values with them. The new-generation internet, web2.0 will help you tackle this challenge to a large extent. Competitiveness should be realized by implementing the concept of customer-centered “experience innovation”. It is internet marketing that will bring about experience innovation, and thus you should pay proper attention to its role to strengthen competitiveness. In this paper, we discuss the new frontier of innovation and internet marketing.

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Technological strategy in Matsushita Electric Works plays a key role in growth strategy towards a management culture that promotes change. The basic concept of the technological strategy is “Technology oriented company” and the mission of R&D is “To continue creating New Products in a “timely” and “perpetual” manner. To realize this “Technology oriented company,” at corporate R&D department the view point of R&D is divided into two, firstly advanced technology development (long term) and secondly new products development (short-mid term). R&D is managed by considering commercialization from an early stage of development in close collaboration with our business units. Also, for researchers and engineers, new product development leaders are cultivated in terms of expanding experience by transferring in accordance with an innovative R&D organization matrix or shifting to other technological areas that are different from their current work.

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In planning or design phase, project members make decisions with limited or uncertain information. Those decisions might turn into risks. The facts which they make decisions with uncertain information are not described on any specific documents, but only recognized by decision makers themselves. Therefore, it is difficult for a third person to find out the risks. In order to manage these types of risks, it is important for those who make decisions with uncertain information to share their experiences. However, since not all engineers have the knowledge of risk management, it is extremely difficult to describe risks appropriately. In addition, when various kinds of people are involved in the risk identification process, same risks tend to be listed too many times because they are expressed differently by different people. This article will discuss the standardization of risk description which will reduce the fluctuation in expressing risks. Existing risk models will also be examined.

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Environmental problems such as global warming, deforestation or loss of biodiversity are highly transboundary. Solving the problems, therefore, requires knowledges from different scientific disciplines including physics, chemistry or biology, and requires integrating them. Transdisciplinary science and technology are ways to integrate knowledges from different disciplines, however, methodologies integrating them are not established yet. This review paper summarizes transdisciplinary characteristics of environmental problems, and introduces approaches to solve the problems with a focus on global warming.

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This article describes Gakkai Net, which is a general web-based platform, to support various activities of academic societies. Gakkai Net platform is designed to cover such various activities of academic societies as regular conference management, paper review, journal editing and production management, and membership administrations all on the web. The platform is characterized by the following unique features: 1) Database centered system, which contains various aspects of society members’ information, 2) Software agent sub-systems to facilitate the implementation of the functionalities, 3) Web-based applications for end-users with unified interfaces corresponding to the user model and access control for different types of users in order to comfort ever changing members in charge of activities. The article addresses the basic principles, system configuration and functions, current status, and future plans of Gakkai Net.

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This paper describes an effect of vacillating in mind in case of concept creation. The vacillating can be seen at a time of concentration to categorize some specific words by reviewing the meaning of the words, whilst the effect is empowered with analogical thought that provides an idea of new concept. The ones who vacillate to some specific words tend to spend time in order to make sense as valuable scenario until the ones fully understand by themselves. This implies that the resource management shall be the key for value sensing as the punctual time is required in the halls of business.

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Biofeedback is a method or phenomenon that the ability to control the inner state of body consciously by oneself can be acquired after some training period using added external feedback pathways. The changes in the physiological indices are detected by appropriate biological measuring instruments, and then the internal state is assessed by them, converted into the recognizable information and presented to the person him/herself. Biofeedback is attractive and fruitful not only as a therapy for patients but also a research tool for brain, mind-body interactions, consciousness, learning, and so on. The Japanese Society of Biofeedback Research is a community where the researchers and practitioners in various fields can meet, discuss and work together. The synergy of medicine, psychology and engineering is expected to spread the benefit of biofeedback for the welfare of human being.

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