Yoshitaka Osawa

Development and Application of A New Methodology of Evaluating Industrial R&D Projects

This paper proposes a new methodology of evaluating industrial R&D projects to assess the effectiveness of future R&D in terms of financial credibility, to prioritize them efficiently by clear criteria to reduce the time and burden consumed by both project leaders and management staffs. A new methodology has been developed and applied to all Sumitomo Electric Industries (SEI) R&D projects, and is recognized as a useful system for evaluating many R&D projects in a short period, such as 150 projects per month.

An empirical analysis of the valley of death: Large‐scale R&D project performance in a Japanese diversified company

Summary The purpose of this study is to contribute reference material that provides insight into innovative process management that increases R&D output in commercializing new products. A model of a process from research to commercialization with the cumulative profit and loss curve is put forward and hypotheses related to success and failure are developed at the stages up to product launch. Seventeen large projects that have resulted in successful product launches have been examined from the initial research stage to commercialization. Project duration, standardized cumulative R&D expenditures and research resource concentration are analyzed in terms of statistical method and patterns in cumulative profit and loss curves after product sales, as well as the reasons for and other aspects of success/failure are investigated and analyzed. Consequently, valuable information on future management tasks has been obtained such as: (1) project duration differs depending on market sectors, product types and presence/absenceof materials research (2) cumulative profit and loss curves can be categorized into four patterns (3) reasons for failure can be divided into technological and market problem categories and (4) these factors have an impact on product sales.

How Well Did the New Sumitomo Electric Project Ranking Method Predict Performance

The development and implementation of a new R&D project scoring method (NS-method) within Sumitomo Electric Industries was introduced in a previous report. This paper evaluates the NS-methods effectiveness by comparing the information generated by application to 146 projects in 1997 with the project achievements in 2000. The test results revealed that the NS-methods evaluation scores were correlated to the performance indicators such as the gross profit and R&D productivity. It also showed that, when projects are classified into three groups (i.e., Top, Middle, Bottom) according to the forecast data generated by the NS-method, the projects in the Top category had higher actual productivity ratios and success rates than those in the Bottom category.

Electronic structures of silicon-containing polymers with unsaturated bonds

Abstract The electronic structures in the optimized geometries of polysilacetylene (PS), polysemisilacetylene (PSS), polysilacene (PSA) and polysemisilacene (PSSA), being silicon-substituted versions of polyacetylene and polyacene, are studied on the basis of the one-dimensional tight-binding self-consistent crystal orbital method. It is found that these polymers have band gap values similar to those of ordinary organic conductive polymers. Furthermore, the carbon-silicon bonds have large electron deviation, resulting in considerable degrees of polarization between these atoms. This feature is also discussed in connection with the possible manifestation of ferroelectric properties in PSS and PSSA.