Narrow Results

Six-Sigma is a well-established and one of the most recognized approaches in manufacturing strategy development. Companies who have adopted and successfully implemented such a methodology were found to be more innovative which led to increased customer satisfaction and an improved bottom line. The aim of this study is to identify factors for successful Six-Sigma implementation by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The study involves four phases, which include: (1) assessment of potential factors and performance measures in Six-Sigma implementation (2) development of the problem structure and building the AHP model (3) soliciting and compilation of opinion on preferences through expert interviews, and (4) determination of critical success factors. Twenty-one experts, consisting of three-project champions and eighteen-black belts from five multinational companies located in Thailand, were interviewed. Expert Choice^® software was used to compute the normalized and unique priority weights. The results of the data analysis determined the relative importance of individual factors, and in turn identified the critical factors on which organizations should consolidate their efforts in the process of implementing Six-Sigma methodology.

This paper examines how a sectoral innovation system evolves over time and what the underlying factors derive from the development of automotive industry in Thailand which is presented as a case example. Since 1960's, the government policies and the development of liberal investment climate have been a push for the influx of large-scale foreign direct investments (FDI) in Thailand. Automotive industry has also been targeted as a major assembly base of foreign carmakers while the local suppliers were mostly slow and passive learners. In the late- 1990's, foreign carmakers began acting as "lead" firms to invest in R&D and related activities. This induced positive coevolution in other actors, especially the first-tier foreign suppliers and some local suppliers, in the sectoral innovation systems which, in turn, became stronger, more coherent and product-specific. According to Thailand Automotive Institute (TAI), the production volume is expected to grow to two million units by 2015 which would bring Thailand to be on the top-ten list of the largest auto-producers in the world. This research paper has implications on the concept of sectoral innovation system, corporate technology strategies and government technology and innovation policies.

This study focuses on applying bibliometric analysis and text mining technique to generate technology intelligence from publication databases. The intelligence represents the research profile and landscape by highlighting active research areas and revealing professional communities along with their social networks. Professional communities can be not just existing networks, but also hidden ones. In this paper, the analysis of biomedical engineering (BME) field in Thailand is presented as the case study. The findings can be used as key inputs for the development of effective policies and incentives to promote the research activities as well as the collaboration among different groups of experts.

Total quality management (TQM) and innovation have long been discussed as major contributors to organizational success. TQM has been discussed with regard to management practices while innovation is discussed with regard to technological change. However, a vague relationship has been established between these two due to the challenge to establish statistical relationship. The main purpose of this research is to empirically study the application of TQM for innovation. Fourteen companies from Japan, India and Thailand are considered in an empirical exploratory research to uncover the relationship between TQM and innovation. Three factors of TQM (human factor, technology factor and information factor) are considered to see the effect on process innovation and product innovation. The research findings indicate that TQM facilitates the development of innovation capabilities in organizations through harmonized management practices in a sequence of inter-related incremental innovation initiatives. Moreover, this research indicates that the innovation speed achieved by TQM is found to be dramatic as compared to traditional innovation. However, it was not only the speediness of the innovation achieved using TQM that surprises, but also its response to different market needs.