- 著者
-
宮本 琢也
安田 昌司
前川 佳一
- 出版者
- 日本経営学会
- 雑誌
- 日本経営学会誌 (ISSN:18820271)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.30, pp.16-26, 2012-12-28 (Released:2017-08-01)
This paper focuses on Sanyo's case of engineer transfer between a corporate R&D and a manufacturing division and discusses how an interactive collaboration between the two divisions should be. Rechargeable battery market is somewhat unique in experiencing two of the major technology transitions in the 1990s. In this kind of the transition, particularly in terms of management of technology, it is extremely critical for a corporate R&D and a manufacturing division to collaborate closely, like taking care of both old and new technologies and making decision of shifting from the old to the new. This research focuses on the R&D management of Sanyo Electric Company in the 1990s. First, to address the case, two of the technical transitions are illustrated in terms of the imperative background to analyze, like an overview of the rechargeable battery market and the competition among Sanyo Electric and the other companies. Second, this paper analyzes the R&D activities in both corporate R&D and manufacturing division and the personnel transfer between the two divisions. One of the findings regarding personnel transfer is leaving the senior engineer in the corporate R&D, meanwhile transferring younger up-and-coming researchers to the manufacturing division. This fact leads to the discussion of how this interaction contributed to the outcome from the collaboration between a corporate R&D and a manufacturing division in a dynamic technological transition. Consequently, this paper found that a dynamic interaction functioned to offer solutions to the manufacturing division by ; younger engineers to facilitate the transfer of technology to the manufacturing division, while senior engineer left in the R&D division to explore new applications and to fine-tune technologies at R&D to customers' requirements consistently. With this combination of engineering team, Sanyo was able to manage the technology transitions tactfully.