The objective of a synchronized production system is to harmonize all the elements of the manufacturing process based on the Just-in-Time strategy. This strategy is designed to improve return on investment in business by reducing in-process inventory and its associated costs. The process is driven by a series of signals, or Kanban, that tell production processes to make the next part. The Synchronized Production System sets out the fundamentals of the process clearly and concisely and shows the remarkable results that can be achieved: Money previously tied up in stock is released Quicker response times to customer orders, leading to increased customer satisfaction Custom manufacture to order - improving equity return by reducing risk Dramatically improved product quality This ground-breaking book also explains how to improve performance through changes to management processes making it an invaluable reference for managers in all types and size of business.

Drug Efflux Pumps in Cancer Resistance Pathways: From Molecular Recognition and Characterization to Possible Inhibition Strategies in Chemotherapy, Volume Seven, describes the fundamental aspects of efflux pumps of the ATP-binding cassette superfamily in cancer resistance pathways, along with strategies to target and improve chemotherapy efficacy. Pumps of the ATP-binding cassette superfamily (ABCs) regulate the access of drugs to the intracellular space. In this context, the overexpression of ABCs is a well-known mechanism of multidrug resistance in cancer and is associated with therapeutic failure. Cancer types discussed include breast, endocrine, hematologic, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, lung, skin and central nervous system cancers. The book is a valuable source for researchers and advanced students in cancer, biology, pharmacology, pharmaceutical sciences, biomaterials and medical/clinical sciences that are interested in accessing a comprehensive compendium on efflux pumps in mechanisms of cancer resistance.

The scale and complexity of research and practices of open innovation mandate a correspondingly sophisticated form of decision making. Strategic Planning Decisions brings together a number of tools that ease the decision process in technology companies, providing both conceptual frameworks and practical applications. Innovative approaches are presented such as an ontology-based model where all the relevant aspects of a potential technology are interrelated to provide a comprehensive and logically connected data pool for decision makers. Divided into two sections, Strategic Planning Decisions describe both strategic approaches using the decision tools, and tactical approaches. Some of these tools are expanded while some others are embedded in a model that will lay the ground for practical application. These include: bibliometric analysis, ontology, roadmapping, lead user, six sigma, and multi-actor & multi-objective decision making methods Recent research and relevant theory are balanced with up-to-date practical applications and hands-on techniques making Strategic Planning Decisions ideal for engineers who wish to keep up-to-date with current ideas in the field of TM. It also provides workable methods for practising managers from all levels who wish to apply a more rigorous approach in their work and consultants concerned with technology assessment and its management.

Ever since Schumpeter's groundbreaking work there has been a plethora of new research seeking to extend the direction and dynamics of innovation. Using a rich account of detailed interviews, this book offers new evidence on how latecomers have successfully caught up and leapfrogged incumbent firms. Catching Up and Leapfrogging: the new latecomers in the integrated circuits industry explores how technological transitions affect latecomer catch-up strategies, and vice versa, in a high technology industry. It looks to the East Asian latecomers who, towards the end of the twentieth century, pioneered a new pathway through organizational change by specializing in the key production stages of integrated circuits and pushing technologies further. This volume assesses how latecomer resource acquisition strategies have varied alongside structural industry changes and evaluates the mechanisms through which firms started life as technology followers and rose to become technology leaders. Xiao-Shan Yap and Rajah Rasiah present a unique story about how firm strategies evolve from the catching up phase to the leapfrogging phase, captured from the accounts of managers on the ground. It is the first time firm-level strategies have been systematically analysed to describe twenty-first century strategic management in the integrated circuits industry in particular, and the high tech industry in general. The evidence and analysis in this book offers insights for chief executive officers, policy-makers and researchers to revisit existing approaches to the theory of catching up and leapfrogging.

Over the last fifty-plus years, the increased complexity and speed of integrated circuits have radically changed our world. Today, semiconductor manufacturing is perhaps the most important segment of the global manufacturing sector. As the semiconductor industry has become more competitive, improving planning and control has become a key factor for business success. This book is devoted to production planning and control problems in semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities. It is the first book that takes a comprehensive look at the role of modeling, analysis, and related information systems for such manufacturing systems. The book provides an operations research- and computer science-based introduction into this important field of semiconductor manufacturing-related research.

Divided Sun is the story of the methods and machinations that have driven Japan's high-tech industrial policies over the last two turbulent decades. It focuses on MITI and Japan's giant electronics firms - their ambitions and conflicts - in the context of the core of MITI's high-tech strategy since the 1970's, the so-called "cooperative" technology consortia. The author finds that despite widespread claims to the contrary, MITI's industrial policy in high technology has proved to be neither cooperative nor successful. He shows that the policymaking process is torn by conflict and competition: between MITI and other bureaucracies, between MITI and powerful Japanese companies, and between the different companies. As a result, the elaborate structures created to promote cooperation are in many cases a public show masking the underlying reality of fierce competition and conflict.
Equally important is the fact that recent technologies emerging from Japanese high-tech consortia have been sadly disappointing. The author's detailed explanation of MITI's internal decisionmaking processes reveals that much of MITI's decline in effectiveness is caused by its rigid insistence on targeting technologies in accordance with long-term plans even when the technologies are soon rendered obsolete in the rapidly changing high-tech marketplace. In the shadow of these new realities, MITI finds itself at a turning point. The author argues that it will have to redefine itself and carve out a new role in the Japanese political economy and the bureaucracy. MITI's primary focus cannot be what once worked so successfully, i.e., the promotion of Japanese companies in international competition. If it does not find a new role, and soon, MITI faces a slow but inevitable decline in influence and effectiveness.

This book aims to help business strategists and policy-makers understand how compatibility standards may be used to ensure business success. It combines strategic analysis with an evaluation of standards policy and suggests ways in which markets and policy intervention may be effectively used together. Cases include VCRs, CDs, DAT, PCs, Open Systems, HDTV, and Telepoint cordless phones.

Contemporary management concepts, methods, and techniques for global, high-technology industries

The rapidly changing shape of technology industries requires a constant reevaluation of what it takes to manage such sophisticated corporations effectively. Management for Quality in High-Technology Enterprises explains how traditional "hard" management skills must be combined with new "soft" skills, why an expanding, global market necessitates an expanding, global mindset, and why a "focus on customers" must dominate all aspects of business.

Momentous external and internal changes to technology enterprises demand new management procedures. Externally, industries are moving toward globalization, increased mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and outsourcing. Internally, the typical workforce has become significantly more knowledgeable and professional; the increase in knowledge workers in particular is changing the role and function of the contemporary manager. Drawing on their considerable experience as leaders in a high-technology corporation, Yefim Fasser and Donald Brettner show managers how to succeed in a shifting playing field.

The book’s five parts, comprising twenty chapters, are:

• A Systemic Approach to Organizational Transformation
• Managing a Knowledge-Based Organization
• Managing in a Global Environment
• Some Aspects of Managing Quality
• Reshaping the Organizational Culture

Eschewing abstract, technical jargon, the authors explain in a lively, accessible fashion what managers must do to cope with the global changes in technology enterprises. Middle managers and engineers in high-technology manufacturing companies, as well as all professionals interested in improving their managerial knowledge and skills, will benefit from Management for Quality in High-Technology Enterprises.

Cutting through unnecessary technical data, this invaluable book presents comprehensive facts and figures relating to the many materials available for use in medical devices. Chapters in Part One address types of materials and also discuss biocompatibility, as well as batteries and fibre optics, while Part Two concentrates on design and manufacturing methods, including information on prototyping, sterilisation, standards and quality control. The penultimate part of the book speculates on future development trends in medical device engineering and considers the impact on the environment of medical device manufacture and disposal. Information on sourcing is provided in the final part. Design Engineering of Biomaterials for Medical Devices discusses the fundamentals and applied nature of:

• Ferrous and non-ferrous metals
• Polymers and PVC
• Non metallic/non-polymer materials
• Adhesives
• Filters and membranes
• Micro-engineering
• Design specifications
• Liability
• Patenting
• Packaging

Describes principles and methodologies necessary to build efficient and highly productive work systems in high tech organizations that must develop and deploy new products in a timely fashion with competitive advantage. Presents techniques applicable to small high tech consumer products or large complex systems requiring cost control, waste minimization and rapid product development. Stresses methodologies to be used for strategic advantage. Suggests diverse strategic plans and their pros and cons, depending on the product and markets.

There are 17 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union which play an important role in economic life. Within this subset, increasing recognition is being given to "new technology-based ftrms. " 1 In the literature, different defmitions have been put forward to describe the term new technology-based ftrm (Oakey et a11988; Roberts 1991; Autio 1995; Storey and Tether 1998). Common denominators include that the activity is based on the exploitation of advanced technological know-how, the prior affiliation of founders with research establishments and the entrepreneurial character of the ftrm. Research studies in Europe, North America and the Paciftc Rim have identifted these ftrms' important contributions in new employment creation, export sales growth, product and process innovation and structural adjustment (e. g. Rothwell & Zegveld 1982; OECD 1986; Oakey et a11988; Acs & Audretsch 1991; Roberts 1991; Coopers & Lybrand 1996). While there is a growing body of literature on new technology-based ftrms that concentrates on strategic issues such as access to fmancial resources, growth processes and innovation behaviour (see Storey and Tether 1998, for a review), there has been relatively little research into the process by which young high technology companies have internationalised. Research activity in the latter fteld has historically been strongly oriented towards large ftrms or, more rarely, towards "traditional transnational SMEs" in the manufacturing sector that often act as suppliers of bigger ftrms and are characterised by simple production technologies and low-technology products (United Nations 1993)."

This book about the formation, development, and success or failure of new high-technology companies focuses on those that grew up in Boston at the end of the Second World War. Edward Roberts is one of the acknowledged academic experts on entrepreneurship and this is the culmination of his work.

Technology-based firms contribute to dynamic competition, ensure product variety, close market gaps and promote job creation. Their development is impeded by a difficult access to capital, high R&D costs and management deficits. The book analyses their chances and risks in the innovation process. Topics deal with the management of technology-based firms, different aspects on their financing, the spectrum of public promotion programmes and the venture capital market in Germany. Finally, the book centres on regional technology and economic promotion and the creation of regional networks for technology-based firms. The reader documents research of Fraunhofer-ISI on technology-based firms and their environment and aims at a better understanding of specific chances and risks in the development process of such firms.

Japan is an example of what is known as a "latecomer" in industrial development. Drawing on case studies of computer and telecommunications and related firms, Donna Doane investigates how intra- and inter-industry cooperation between public and private enterprises pushed rapid technological advancement in Japan. The book places such interlinkage in the context of a historical evolution, starting with prewar industrial house groupings that helped link indigenous and external ideas and form an integrated technological base.Doane focuses mainly on the postwar, catch-up period from the 1960s through the 1980s in which three characteristics associated with late development are examined: multistructured industry, family-based industrial networks, and a distinct government-industry relationship. Implications of the cooperative structure are drawn for other advanced industrial as well as developing countries, where flexible technological networks could help individual enterprises overcome the limitations of isolated organization to survive rapid economic changes.

The aim of this study is to investigate in the role of Venture Capital in the development of New Technology Based Firms in two countries: USA and Germany. Based on literature review and empirical work issues concerning the extent and stage of financing, the nature of oversight provided by Venture Capitalists and the framework conditions for Venture Capital are subject of investigation. The results have been reflected in a workshop with experts from research, industry and policy.

The incredible progress in microelectronics over the last 20 years has led to a whole range of products that have invaded and often reshaped our lives. Technologies currently being deployed or in the laboratory, such as the information super highway, virtual reality, instantaneous language translators and artificial nerves promise to further revolutionise our lives. This book, written by a distinguished member of the microelectronics community in collaboration with a leading journalist, seeks to bridge the gap between the microelectronics community and the general public. The evolution of the technology is explained with its social and economic effects, showing the forces shaping the industry and concluding with a glimpse of the ideas currently under development in the worlds' electronics laboratories.

The life sciences is an industrial sector that covers the development of biological products and the use of biological processes in the production of goods, services and energy. This sector is frequently presented as a major opportunity for policy-makers to upgrade and renew regional economies, leading to social and economic development through support for high-tech innovation. Innovation, Regional Development and the Life Sciences analyses where innovation happens in the life sciences, why it happens in those places, and what this means for regional development policies and strategies. Focusing on the UK and Europe, its arguments are relevant to a variety of countries and regions pursuing high-tech innovation and development policies. The book's theoretical approach incorporates diverse geographies (e.g. global, national and regional) and political-economic forces (e.g. discourses, governance and finance) in order to understand where innovation happens in the life sciences, where and how value circulates in the life sciences, and who captures the value produced in life sciences innovation. This book will be of interest to researchers, students and policy-makers dealing with regional/local economic development.

During the 1970s, Japan supplanted the United States as the world leader in steel production, automobile manufacturing, and consumer electronics. Are the Japanese poised to repeat these successes in the semiconductor industry? This question has vast potential significance, because semiconductor technology holds the key to competitiveness in high technology, one of America's last bastions of industrial supremacy. This book, the product of years of joint research by a multidisciplinary team of American and Japanese scholars, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each country's semiconductor industry with reference to three major areas: technological innovation; the role of government, not only in specific policies directed toward the semiconductor industry, but also in the broader context of industrial policy, government-business relations, and the two political systems; and the influence of financial institutions, ties between banks and businesses, and corporate financing. The book provides, in short, a broad yet in-depth analysis of emerging industrial competition in high technology between the world's two largest market economies. This is the first book in the series ISIS Studies in International Policy, sponsored by the International Strategic Institute at Stanford.

What do CERN, smartphones, the iridium satellite network, the most popular app stores in the world, the biggest online game in the world, Moscow drivers, Seniors golfer Tony Johnstone, sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis and anyone who has their DNA sequenced have in common? They all rely on innovations that have come out of the technology cluster known as the Cambridge Phenomenon. This book, a follow-up to The Cambridge Phenomenon: 50 Years of Innovation and Enterprise, showcases what the Cambridge technology cluster has done for the world. The Cambridge Phenomenon: Global Impact reveals just how many of us, all around the globe, rely on Cambridge technology every day. This book tells the important, hidden story of how academic excellence and entrepreneurial endeavour have improved people's lives the world over. It is crucial reading for anybody interested in the ways successful businesses work, and the fundamental role of our great educational institutions in fostering that success.

In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of trading, at that point the largest gain in stock market history. Coming at a time of economic recession and declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national economic malaise. Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech's improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity. Hughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to Genentech's science and business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech's founders, followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests and university research, and with government regulation, venture capital, and commercial profits. Integrating the scientific, the corporate, the contextual, and the personal, "Genentech" tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.

PRAISE FOR Trading in the Zone

"Ari Kiev takes us inside the most successful trading firms of our time and shows us how those firms seek to improve performance through disciplined self analysis and structured goal management. His application of psychiatric tools to the short-term trading aspects of behavioral finance can give readers a competitive edge."–Charles A. Leeds Jr., CFA, Managing Member, Hermit Capital Management, LLC

"Kiev uses the powerful combination of his professional training as well as a unique vantage point inside the ropes at a market-moving, high-rolling hedge fund to deliver a fascinating analysis of a trader’s psyche. Although trading is widely acknowledged as an art, one that requires incredible innate intuition and feel for the markets, Kiev prescribes ‘getting into the zone’– a psychological state that one can create – for those aiming to achieve a higher level of performance. His anecdotes, case studies, interviews and tales of the ‘Master Trader’ are both instructive and tremendously insightful. A compelling read."–Ciaran T. O'Kelly, Head of Equity Trading, Salomon Smith Barney

"Trading in the Zone discusses the psychological considerations that serve to distinguish the most successful traders and portfolio managers from the majority of traders who are doomed to failure. Trading is so greatly influenced by emotions and discipline that not to have Ari’s insight and advice is a serious mistake."–Tom DeMark, author of The New Science of Technical Analysis

"I have been managing money for more than twenty years and I am happy to endorse Dr. Kiev’s principles, which have enhanced my performance and that of my traders over the past three years. Trading in the Zone will propel readers to the next level of trading success."–Jay Goldman, Hedge Fund Manager, J. Goldman & Co., L.P.

"Ari Kiev’s Trading in the Zone clearly and forcefully illustrates the mental discipline that will enable a stock trader to improve his performance."–Allan R. Tessler, Chairman and CEO, Jnet Enterprises

"Dr. Kiev works with professional traders, including some of the best traders in the country. In Trading in the Zone, he provides numerous case studies based on the market experiences of these traders, told both through narratives and their own words, in order to distill insights and lessons that should prove invaluable to professional and aspiring traders alike."–Jack Schwager, author of The Market Wizards and Stock Market Wizards

Ever since Schumpeter's groundbreaking work there has been a plethora of new research seeking to extend the direction and dynamics of innovation. Using a rich account of detailed interviews, this book offers new evidence on how latecomers have successfully caught up and leapfrogged incumbent firms. Catching Up and Leapfrogging: the new latecomers in the integrated circuits industry explores how technological transitions affect latecomer catch-up strategies, and vice versa, in a high technology industry. It looks to the East Asian latecomers who, towards the end of the twentieth century, pioneered a new pathway through organizational change by specializing in the key production stages of integrated circuits and pushing technologies further. This volume assesses how latecomer resource acquisition strategies have varied alongside structural industry changes and evaluates the mechanisms through which firms started life as technology followers and rose to become technology leaders. Xiao-Shan Yap and Rajah Rasiah present a unique story about how firm strategies evolve from the catching up phase to the leapfrogging phase, captured from the accounts of managers on the ground. It is the first time firm-level strategies have been systematically analysed to describe twenty-first century strategic management in the integrated circuits industry in particular, and the high tech industry in general. The evidence and analysis in this book offers insights for chief executive officers, policy-makers and researchers to revisit existing approaches to the theory of catching up and leapfrogging.

The life sciences is an industrial sector that covers the development of biological products and the use of biological processes in the production of goods, services and energy. This sector is frequently presented as a major opportunity for policy-makers to upgrade and renew regional economies, leading to social and economic development through support for high-tech innovation. Innovation, Regional Development and the Life Sciences analyses where innovation happens in the life sciences, why it happens in those places, and what this means for regional development policies and strategies. Focusing on the UK and Europe, its arguments are relevant to a variety of countries and regions pursuing high-tech innovation and development policies. The book's theoretical approach incorporates diverse geographies (e.g. global, national and regional) and political-economic forces (e.g. discourses, governance and finance) in order to understand where innovation happens in the life sciences, where and how value circulates in the life sciences, and who captures the value produced in life sciences innovation. This book will be of interest to researchers, students and policy-makers dealing with regional/local economic development.

Everything you need to know about the most important trend in the history of the world

Within most people's lifetimes, the developments in the biotechnology sector will allow us to live increasingly long and healthy lives, as well as provide us with technological innovations that will transform the way we live. But these innovations offer more than just hope for a better life, but hope for better returns too. Financial returns of incredible magnitude await savvy investors and businesspeople who can see the massive changes on the horizon. This book details these fast-moving trends and innovations and offers extensive advice on how to profit from them in business and investing.

"Free as in Freedom" interweaves biographical snapshots of GNU project founder Richard Stallman with the political, social and economic history of the free software movement. It examines Stallman's unique personality and how that personality has been at turns a driving force and a drawback in terms of the movement's overall success.

"Free as in Freedom" examines one man's 20-year attempt to codify and communicate the ethics of 1970s era "hacking" culture in such a way that later generations might easily share and build upon the knowledge of their computing forebears. The book documents Stallman's personal evolution from teenage misfit to prescient adult hacker to political leader and examines how that evolution has shaped the free software movement. Like Alan Greenspan in the financial sector, Richard Stallman has assumed the role of tribal elder within the hacking community, a community that bills itself as anarchic and averse to central leadership or authority. How did this paradox come about? "Free as in Freedom" provides an answer. It also looks at how the latest twists and turns in the software marketplace have diminished Stallman's leadership role in some areas while augmenting it in others.

Finally, "Free as in Freedom" examines both Stallman and the free software movement from historical viewpoint. Will future generations see Stallman as a genius or crackpot? The answer to that question depends partly on which side of the free software debate the reader currently stands and partly upon the reader's own outlook for the future. 100 years from now, when terms such as "computer," "operating system" and perhaps even "software" itself seem hopelessly quaint, will Richard Stallman's particular vision of freedom still resonate, or will it have taken its place alongside other utopian concepts on the 'ash-heap of history?'