technology planning

Product innovations are mainly based on a future-oriented alignment of technology push and market pull. The alignment of both aspects with regard to conformity to the corporate strategy is carried out in the context of the strategic product and technology planning, which is the initial point within the product design process. The integral element of this paper is a data base-system which allows performing the tasks of strategic product and technology planning. In particular, information about technologies, product ideas and market segments are represented and related with each other. Typical applications are the design of morphologic boxes an innovation roadmaps.

Strategic product planning and strategic technology planning is more important than ever. This planning is based upon the anticipation of market and technology developments. The article shows how new technologies are taken up and how they can be combined to coherent technology strategies. These help the companies to further develop the product range and to position themselves advantageously in the competition of tomorrow. A consistent example from the automotive lighting engineering underlines the high feasibility of the methodology.

New technologies are often drivers of structural change, which in many cases leads to profound organizational and infrastructural changes in industry and within the enterprises. The aim of business action is to be versatile. That means that enterprises should play the role of the main actor of change instead of reacting only. The technology calendar described in this article is a strategic planning instrument. With this instrument it is possible to gain an overview about technologies available now and in future. From the confrontation of the product spectrum that can be manufactured in future and the technologies available in future, the necessary organizational and infrastructural measures, which result as consequence from the technological change, can be initiated. This way the planning of business change becomes possible.

Productivity, quality, flexibility and manufacturing costs are not the only criteria for an effective manufacture. To keep competitiveness, a global optimum of the process chain for the manufacturing of an individual product has to be achieved, considering the existing manufacturing capabilities and innovative technologies. In this paper approaches for integrated technology planning are discussed, which are developed at the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) in Aachen.