Edwin Garces

Exploring environmental awareness in the electronics manufacturing industry: a source for innovation

Environmental awareness gained a very high attention in the last couple of decades. Most of these diverse environmental concerns, were addressed in several unique waves across independent industries. This paper describes how the increase in concern for the environment during the past several decades has impacted technology management in the electronics industry and demonstrate the use of a model for comparing the strategic benefits of environmental management systems across companies. The generic competitive environmental strategies diagram described four different business strategies that guided a selection of company analyses resulting in categories of environmental business strategies with competitive advantage. Thus with proper implementation, there is an opportunity to being green, even in the high tech electronics industry. Finally the paper finishes with a set of propositions for exploring the linkages between these strategies and potential innovations.

Product and process innovation in manufacturing firms: a 30-year bibliometric analysis

Built upon a 30-year dataset collected from the web of science database, the present research aims to offer a comprehensive overview of papers, authors, streams of research, and the most influential journals that discuss product and process innovation in the manufacturing environment. The dataset is composed of 418 papers from more than 150 journals from the period between 1985 and 2015. Homogeneity analysis by means of alternating least squares (HOMALS) and social network analysis (SNA) are used to accomplish the objectives listed above through the keywords given by authors. Initially, the paper highlights and discusses the similarity between the topics debated by the main journals in this field. Subsequently, a wide-range map of topics is presented highlighting five main areas of interests; namely, performance, patent, small firm, product development, and organization. A SNA is also performed in order to validate the results that emerged from HOMALS. Finally, several insights about future research avenues in the manufacturing field are provided.

Forecasting the Electric Transformation in Transportation: The Role of Battery Technology Performance

ABSTRACT In an effort to encourage consumers to purchase electric vehicles (EVs), the government has been funding battery research to solve some of these problems. This paper presents a study using technology forecasting using data envelopment analysis (TFDEA) to forecast future battery performance characteristics. The results were compared against the performance goals established by the US Department of Energy (DOE). We find that the foreseen progress of EV battery performance will be insufficient to meet the DOE projected goals for the range that EVs can travel before running out of power. Therefore, a new battery technology must be developed because the incremental improvements in current battery technologies leave EVs considerably short of the DOE performance specification for longer trip ranges.

Technology foresight: a bibliometric analysis to identify leading and emerging methods

Foresight studies provide essential information used by the government, industry and academia for technology planning and knowledge expansion. They are complicated, resource-intensive, and quite expensive. The approach, methods, and techniques must be carefully identified and selected. Despite the global importance of foresight activities, there are no frameworks to help one develop and plan a proper foresight study. This paper begins to close this gap by analyzing and comparing different schools of thought and updating the literature with the most current tools and methods. Data mining techniques are used to identify articles through an extensive literature review. Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques are used to identify and analyze leading journals, articles, and researchers. A framework is developed here to provide a guide to help in the selection of methods and tools for different approaches.

Identification of experts using social network analysis (SNA)

Technologies are developing rapidly and the necessity of specific strategies and techniques that contribute to a more effective, congruent, and faster association of ideas are important. Many methods, tools, and techniques require the opinion of experts or debates of a certain topics. Finding these experts is not easy and the knowledge and experience on a determined field will determine the quality of the results. Therefore, research collaboration among experts has gained importance during the last decades, especially in the area of technology. Since 1960s, the idea of identifying the main actors in a society or a person that has a prestige in the community has gained interest. Social Network Analysis is a common method for finding who is the knowledgeable person in a community. In this paper, SNA and Bibliometric Analysis are used to determine the lead authors, co-authors, institutions, contact information in a period from 2005 to 2015. The main objectives of this paper are to identify experts in the area of Energy Efficiency -Commercial Refrigeration and to develop a methodology to identify experts by using Social Network Analysis and Bibliographic Analysis. The method is based on Social Network Analysis and Bibliometric Analysis using journal sources such as Web of Science and Compendex. Since the main objective is to identify experts that influence the research and development in the Commercial Refrigeration area, the study includes the identification of experts in the U.S. and around the world. A software was developed using “R”. The results show a detailed information of the authors in order to be used in the specific research areas.

The Application of Social Network Analysis: Case of Smart Roofing

The use of social network analysis (SNA) becomes popular in social science research in the recent years. It is a practical application because it helps organizations to have better conceptualized and new understandings of the interactions. It could help organizations interpret and understand complexity, systems, pattern of changes, and structure of interactions. Moreover, SNA applications have been applied in many complicated fields to identify knowledge leaders in organizations, measure collaboration of teams, illustrate the hidden patterns of structure, and exploring the paths of interactions. In addition, many software programs were developed for personal or limited distribution by mathematicians, sociologists, graph theorists, and information technology specialists enabling SNA to facilitate the analysis of data and the creation of sociograms easier than before. Applying SNA in organizations could benefit many internal activities. It could help organizations to identify the group of experts for technology roadmapping (TRM) or R&D related activities, to know who the most appropriate expert for future collaboration may be, and to see the pattern of the interactions for future R&D planning. This chapter proposes an analysis of smart roofing using SNA to identify the group of experts, the interactions among experts, and the patterns of these interactions to help researchers to gain a better understanding of the current situation of smart roofing research and development programs and also to help them to prepare related future plans in order to promote the progress of smart roofing research and development programs.

An Assessment of the Impacts of Government Energy Policy on Energy Technology, Innovation, and Security: The Case of Renewable Technologies in the US Electricity Sector

Purpose The reduction of using natural gas and coal and the necessity of having different sources of energy are essential for the energy security in the USA. Renewable energy technologies are considered as the alternative, but these technologies are not yet reliable and cost effective. The objective of this paper is to identify the factors that results in technological change and to analyze the direction and effects of energy policies in the electricity sector.