Abstract
When we talk of technology and of technological progress what we mean is the application of scientific discoveries through engineering. The quest for scientific advances is the object of basic research which works at the frontiers of knowledge. Scientific discoveries are brought forward toward practical implementation by applied research while development, the next step, produces useful products. It is not easy to say a priori how valuable and beneficial a new product is going to be. For some of them demand is already there; whatever promotes health services in an ageing society is an example. For others the demand must be created. This is the role of marketing which is the driving source of sales.
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Notes
- 1.
Circa 500 B.C.
- 2.
- 3.
Quite to the contrary, GE implemented and popularized Six Sigma (Chap. 12), which was originally invented by Motorola.
- 4.
A hypothesis is a tentative statement which needs to be tested. More on this in Chap. 8.
- 5.
The incandescent lamp is a nineteenth century development, one of the many which came from the brilliant mind of Thomas Edison.
- 6.
Lamp manufacturing is notoriously difficult to optimize because lamps are made of glass and a small lots policy is very expensive because of breakage in setup time and the first runs following it.
- 7.
The specific issue at the time of this meeting was the behaviour of the discharge electrode.
- 8.
Which had manufacturing facilities but no research lab.
- 9.
Among lamp companies this generally stands at about 6% of annual business.
- 10.
As contrasted to the traditional lighting of a very small sample of lamps till burnout.
- 11.
Besides the fact that such a policy did not make sense lies the fact that “good”, “bad” and “average” are totally subjective.
- 12.
In Omega’s case there have been two main ways for making tungsten from ore: the one is Wolframit with procurement sources Spain (pure), Peru (Sio2), Borneo (Sio2, Po, Arsenate). The other is CaWo4 with sources: Spain (pure), China (much Si, tin, fluorite), Russia, Sweden, Finland (much fluorite), and Canada.
- 13.
Philips tried to work on ore on a continuous, non-stop basis but this did not work so well, either.
- 14.
A small undemanding job, a characterization usually reserved to the postal service.
- 15.
Idem.
References
Packard D (1995) The HP way: how Bill Hewlett and I built our company. Harper Business, New York
Chorafas DN (1998) Handbook of agent technology. McGraw-Hill, New York
Iacocca L (1988) Talking straight. Bantam Books, New York
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Chorafas, D.N. (2013). Product Assurance. In: Quality Control Applications. Springer Series in Reliability Engineering. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2966-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2966-0_1
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