Management of Technology and Innovation in Japan

100 S. J. Harryson
Leveraging Intracorporate Process-Oriented Skills
After a few years, the FLCD project expanded to a Display Business Operations
Centre with three FLCD projects focusing on:
� Materials: in particular, alignment of ferroelectric crystals.
� Production technologies: panel manufacturing and high-precision mounting
techniques.
� Interface: the connection of computers to the FLCDs, mainly software engineering.
As the display project progressed towards trial manufacturing, engineers from
three units, which were tied to operations management (i.e., Cost Engineering,
Quality Management and Production Management), were transferred into the project.
In early 1993, the Display Business Operations Centre consisted, of some 100
engineers who were involved in one or several of the materials, production and interface
technology projects. The Display Business Operations Centre manager
stated:
Knowledge from external divisions is brought in, whenever necessary, by moving in
members from these divisions. As a result, a project team is not in a rigid form but
rather transitory and flexible through the continuous moving in and out of members.
Considerable synergies were exploited by migrating and cross-fertilizing technologies
and skills within the Component Business Operations HQ, partly between
flat panel displays and solar cell panels, and also with semiconductor production
technology, in particular aligners and steppers. The Project sponsor, Mr.
Toru Takahashi, stated that:
Canon’s experience in development of aligners and steppers has been of great use to
us when developing production equipment for FLCD. Also, a lot of the work that our
material engineers in the Canon Research Centre have done on toners and on optical
products has greatly benefited our development of FLCD materials.
As FLCDs had never before been mass produced, some additional manufacturing
know-how as well as new equipment were necessary. Key suppliers were
therefore involved as soon as the pilot production line began to develop. A senior
researcher stated:
We studied the technology together, which was advantageous for all of us. The key
suppliers could acquire more knowledge on our FLCD technology and its development
and we could build know-how within specialized production technology.
Close contacts were maintained with several competing suppliers to remain up
to date on all state-of-the-art production technologies and to increase the competitive
pressure on the suppliers. Some ten suppliers, labeled ‘co-developers’ were
closely involved in the development activities of all the aforementioned core tech-