An-Najah Staff

This paper highlights technology roadmapping issues for advanced industries, in particular with regard to disruptive technologies. It examines the currently available range of technology watch techniques and considers the potential offered by the emerging Semantic Web. This paper introduces the technology watch research work of the University of Nottingham's Responsive Manufacturing Group and describes a database-supported process that has been applied in the UK's aerospace industry. It also describes an ontology-based technology watch system that has been applied in prototype form at a major aerospace manufacturer. A method has been developed to evaluate the level of potential threat that an emerging technology represents and to attach a value to a technology watch project that alleviates that threat level. This paper concludes that an effective technology watch function can significantly mitigate the risks that high technology companies face.

This paper presents a process that has been used by the authors to identify key technological threats and opportunities facing the UK aerospace industry. A group of experts, all of them members of the UK's National Advisory Committee for Aerospace Manufacturing (NACAM), selected six technology themes that were considered to be emerging/growing and would have an impact on aerospace manufacturing technologies. This study included benchmarking and foresight exercises. Based on the results of this study, a bibliometric approach has been used to examine the prioritisation of the selected technologies. The results indicate that most of the technologies ranked highly by the experts have proved to be emerging and of importance according publication and patents, with some exceptions. Overall, the consensus between the NACAM experts, patents and publications perspectives implies a high degree of confidence in the results.