فصلنامه مطالعات مدیریت صنعتی
پیاپی 4 (بهار 1383)

Today technological changes have accelerated to a great deal and future planning needs a deep understanding of these changes. This understanding incorporates precise study of introduction of new and vital technologies. Planning is one of the main applications of forecasting. Technology forecasting lets you to draw the future more clearly and design a better plan for future. There are several methods for technology forecasting. One is patent analysis. This article tries to track the changes of GIS (gas insulated substation) technology and its important subsystems by the means of patent information.

Emerging technologies such as biotheraputics are widely view as the source of new types of competitive advantage. Despite their huge potential gaining advantages from these technologies requires adopting different types of managerial skills and insight than those utilized in the context of incremental improvements. This makes established firms particularly vulnerable to the challenges of these technologies. This paper reviews the findings of selected studies to identify key issues in the development and commercialization of these technologies.

Organizational structure has always been one of the most critical dilemma in the theory of organization. There has been tremendous research findings in this field. Structure-contingency models occupy a central position in the study of organization and as guides for organization design. These models hold that the structure of an organization is dependent on its context. Research has shown that variation in organization structure can be explained by variations in such nontextual factors as technology (Woodward, 1959), environment (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967), size (pugh etal, 1969). In this study literature pertaining to the structural influence of technology, size, environment and the decision-maker choice is reviewed. It has been shown that the structure - contingency models has neglected the decision-maker choice. We propose that an organization's structure is the result of an interaction of the decision maker's cognitive and motivational orientations, and the organization's context, such as technology, size and environment. Our research finding has supported the previous research findings.

QFD starts with the house of quality (HOQ) which is a planning matrix translating the customer needs into measurable product technical requirements (PTRs). As with any other tool the quantum of benefits obtained from the use of QFD is proportional to the effectiveness of its use. A robust analytic method should consider the interrelationships among customer needs and PTRs while determining the importance levels of PTRs in the HOQ. This research employs the analytic network process (ANP) to fulfill this requirement. Furthermore the proposed analytic procedure should take into account the multi objective nature of the problem and thus incorporate other goals such as resource limitation extendibility and manufacturability of software technical requirements (STRs). This research presents a zero one goal programming methodology that includes importance levels of STRs derived using the ANP human resource limitation extendibility level and manufacturability level goals to determine the STRs to be considered in designing the software. Finally with regard to the result of the implemented model it is proposed some solutions for the company to reach a better software design to enhance the customer satisfaction.

Management is one of the basic foundations of administration in developed countries. Since suitable combination of available factors and resources coordination and relation between them and finally due attention to lots of real restrictions are vital to increasing efficiency and productivity. In recent years requirement to considering and analysis of relationships and interactions between different elements has resulted in inventing new methods. These methods and techniques have enabled managers to make effective decisions based on accurate information. This paper surveys the extent to which managers of manufacturing industries are aware about MS techniques and exploits them in practice. For this aim we selected some of the most famous and applicable MS techniques. Then industrial managers view about these techniques and application of them was asked by the means of a questionnaire. In this questionnaire degree of applying and reasons for not applying these methods in important organizational decisions were also surveyed. Degree of awareness and applying these methods in different industries was recognized. Relationship between these two variables and other relevant elements was assessed in the next stage. Finally degree of applying MS techniques in different managerial decisions and reasons for not applying them were ranked based on average ranks obtained from sample.