چارچوب ارزیابی برای انتقال فن آوری تجهیزات جدید در صنعایع با فن آوری پیشرفته

With the rapid advancement of technology, product life cycle is shortening continuously. In order to compete against other firms in fiercely competitive global markets, a firm has to keep developing new technology to differentiate itself from others. The acquisition of new core-technology equipment is especially important for manufacturing advanced products, and the technology know-how of the equipment must be transferred completely from equipment supplier to engineers and operators of the firm to effectively utilize the equipment. The objective of this paper is to explore the technology transfer of equipment and to establish a comprehensive framework for evaluating and selecting new equipment with critical technology transfer. Influence factors for technology transfer of new equipment are first collected by literature review and interviews with related experts in the thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT-LCD) industry in Taiwan. Fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) is applied next to select the most critical factors. Then, interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is employed to determine the interrelationship among the critical factors. A fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) model is constructed to evaluate the technology transfer performance of equipment suppliers. The results of this study should provide a base for firms in evaluating the purchase of new equipment and a reference for equipment suppliers to strengthen their technology transfer process to their buyers.

A good technology transfer can enable a firm to improve manufacturing productivity, alliance efficiency and adaptability, international expansion, and sustainable competitive advantage [1]. While there are various kinds of technology transfer, this study focuses on the technology transfer from equipment supplier to buyer in the acquisition of high-technology equipment. New equipment is purchased to acquire new technology, expand capacity and increase competitiveness. For high-tech industries, equipment is the essential hardware for producing high-tech products, and the equipment itself is produced by the newest technology and is often complicated in nature. Thus, the purchase of equipment (a single piece of equipment or an entire system) requires technology transfer from the equipment supplier to the buying firm. Technology transfer encompasses a complicated process involving the complexity of the technology, the owner's capability of teaching, the acquirer's capability of learning, and the complex interaction between the two parties. In the process of technology transfer of new equipment, buyer–supplier relationship and knowledge management must also be stressed. A buyer–supplier relationship should be maintained with trust, interdependence and sharing in a long-term perspective. When compared to a domestic context, technology transfer in an international context is subjected to more diversified environmental conditions, such as cultural differences, thus creating greater challenges [1]. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how environmental factors influence a firm's ability to transfer technology in an international environment. After obtaining the required technology, the buying firm must transform equipment know-how into new knowledge, which is stored and managed in the firm for the use of related personnel. High-technology equipment usually has very distinctive characteristics, and the transfer of technology knowledge, especially tacit knowledge, and the management of knowledge in the firm are essential to have a better control of equipment, and thus a higher overall productivity. To conclude, technology transfer, buyer–supplier relationship and knowledge management are interrelated in the acquisition of high-tech equipment. Due to the sustained evolution of high technology, the socio-economic status in Taiwan has been developed rapidly. With the accumulated experience in applying and developing technology, Taiwan's high-tech industry is shifting from original equipment manufacturing (OEM) to original design manufacturing (ODM). With the upgrading in high technology, Taiwan's high-tech industry can manufacture products with higher speed, higher precision and higher value-added. TFT-LCD industry is one of the most brilliant industries in Taiwan, which is currently the world's largest supplier country of TFT-LCDs and produces more than 40% of the world's supply [2]. The TFT-LCD industry should keep flourishing in Taiwan with the transfer of Japan's TFT-LCD technology to Taiwan and the competitive advantages of Taiwan in abundant capital, technology from the semiconductor industry, numerous downstream clients, and a relatively complete supply chain [3]. However, most critical equipment is purchased from foreign suppliers. The divergence of culture, technology and technology experience between buyers and foreign suppliers must be monitored carefully, and tactics must be used to decrease the gaps. Therefore, a good technology transfer is necessary. In this research, an evaluation framework for technology transfer of new equipment for TFT-LCD manufacturers is proposed. The process of technology transfer is reviewed through literature first, and experts in the field are interviewed. The criteria and sub-criteria that influence the success of the process are listed. Because the collected sub-criteria are numerous and the experts are not capable of handling pairwise comparisons with too many elements in ANP, it is essential to know the importance of each sub-criterion and to select the most essential ones for further analysis. While Delphi method can accomplish the task, it requires repetitive questionnaires and evaluations, and it cannot deal with the uncertainty of experts' expressions. Thus, Fuzzy Delphi method (FDM), which can both deal with fuzziness and vagueness in experts' expressions and reduce the number of rounds in facilitating the formation of a group judgment, is applied to select the most critical sub-criteria. For an ANP or FANP analysis, the network with the interrelationship among the elements must be constructed first. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is employed to incorporate experts' opinions to determine such an interrelationship among the criteria and among the sub-criteria. A fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) model, which can consider the uncertainty of experts' expressions, is finally constructed to evaluate the technology transfer performance of equipment suppliers. The relative importance weights of the criteria and sub-criteria are calculated, and the ranking of equipment suppliers is generated. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews technology transfer, buyer–supplier relationship and knowledge management. Section 3 goes over the key concepts of FDM, ISM and FANP. An evaluation framework for technology transfer of new equipment is constructed in Section 4. Section 5 provides a case study of TFT-LCD manufacturer in evaluating equipment suppliers. Some concluding remarks are made in the last section.

For capital-intensive high-tech industries, the acquisition of equipment, especially the critical equipment, is very important to gain competitive edge in a fierce global market. An effective and efficient utilization of the equipment can only be done if the purchasing firm fully understands the equipment, and this is related to technology transfer, knowledge management and buyer–supplier relationship. This research therefore studies the aforementioned three aspects, and finds the critical factors of technology transfer from equipment supplier to buyer. FDM, by generalizing experts' opinions, is applied to select the most critical factors. The efficient technology transfer process is constructed into a network problem by applying ISM, and FANP is used to obtain experts' opinions through pairwise comparison. The relative importance weights of the critical factors are calculated, and the ranking of equipment suppliers is generated. The contribution of this paper is to provide a thorough evaluation of the factors important to technology transfer, and these factors can be a reference for industry to conduct performance evaluation of a technology transfer and to promote a good technology transfer when high-tech equipment is purchased. The results of this study can provide information to equipment suppliers to understand what buyers focus on during the acquisition of equipment. This paper also presents a comprehensive framework that can help a firm evaluate the performance of suppliers for future purchase of equipment.