Trend analysis of technology by using F-trem japanese patent and core technology clarification with Quality Function Deployment (QFD) approach

When a company develops technologies or products, it is important to obtain the trend of technology. It is necessary to obtain the trend of technology from macro and micro perspectives. In this case, patent information was used in both macro-and micro-perspectives. The core technologies of the companies are used to analyze the trend of technology from the micro perspective. The QFD approach is used as a method to identify the core technology of a company. From the core technology obtained by the QFD method, the patent classification codes are identified. The changes in technology were obtained by using the patent classification code.


INTRODUCTION
When a company considers their direction to develop technologies and products, it is important to obtain the trend of technology. Two kinds of the trend of technology are necessary for a company. One information is related to the product itself. Another information is related the company's core technology.
In our previous reports, we have shown how to obtain the changes of technology related to the product itself using FI code, Themecode and F-term code. The target products were inkjet printers and projectors. (1,2) In these cases, the analysis was conducted from the macro perspective. However, when companies develop technologies and products, it is also important to know the changes of technology related to their core technologies, which are their strengths. In this case, the analysis is conducted not only from the macro perspective but also from micro perspective.
As a method for capturing changes in technology, we use a method that does not require the opinions and experience of experts in patents and technology. This is because in many studies on technology trend analysis, some results cannot be obtained without incorporating the judgement of patent and technology experts, which the researchers see as a challenge. (5,6,7) In this case study, as in the previous report, (3) an attempt is made to understand technology trends in a way that does not incorporate the opinions of patent and technology experts.
The technology to be analyzed is the core technology of the company. To identify core technologies, the method of clarification of core technologies by QFD is used. (4) In this study, a company's core technology is defined as 'a "technology" that plays a central role in achieving a "function" that customers are happy with for the company's developed product'. (4) As a case study, the Japanese manufacturing company O is taken as an example. Note that Company O is the leading manufacturer in its industry.

Hyposesis
Basically, while using the analysis method to capture technological change in products, it may be possible to capture changes in a company's core technology by replacing the target technology with the company's core technology rather than the product's main technology.
The procedure for capturing technological change in products uses patent classification codes relating to the technology under analysis. In the present analysis, the patent codes relating to technology are replaced with those relating to the company's core technology, rather than the product's.

Analysis Tool
For patent searches, the Yamaguchi University search software YUPASS is used, which is synchronized with the DB of the Japan Patent Office and has the ability to obtain several thousand search results at once. Figure 2 shows the procedure for capturing technological change with regard to a company's core technology. This procedure is basically the same as the procedure for capturing technological changes related to products, (3) except that the patent classification codes used in Step 2 are obtained from terms related to the company's core technology rather than product concepts.

Flow of analysis
The company's core technology is obtained using the QFD. The company's core technology is obtained using the core technology clarification method by QFD.

Patent classification code
In this case study, Japanese patent-specific classification codes are used. The relationship between international patent classification codes and Japanese patent classification codes is shown in Figure 2. The Japanese patent classification codes consist of FI codes, which subdivide the international patent classification codes, Themecodes, which group the FI codes, and F-terms, which classify each Themecode from multiple perspectives.

Clerifying Core Technology using QFD
QFD is a method of translating customer feedback into technical functions, mechanisms and components. (8,9) The procedure to clarify core technology using QFD shown in Figure 4. The voice of the customer is translated step by step into technical words. (2) In this case study, the voice of the customer was the product catalogue, flyers and the product introduction wording on the website.

Analysis case of Company O
The source information for obtaining the change of technology related to mower machine is patent applications.
The patent applications include 'mowing' or 'mower' in the abstract and include 'machine', 'device' or 'equipment' are the target to be analyzed. Figure 5 shows the result of the survey on technological change in mowers. 610 patents had been found from 1991 to 2019.Company O has applied 73 patents from 1987 to 2019.
As Figure 4 shows, mower technology is changing and shifting at intervals of three to four years. It also shows that although Company O is the leading company in mowers, it does not share most of patents related to mowers.  Next, Figure 6 shows the Themecode ranking of mower machine. As shown in Figure6, 2B083, 2B034,2B043, 2B041, and 2B304 are main Themecode. Next, a theme code ranking for mowers was conducted, as shown in Figure 6, which revealed that the main theme codes for mowers were 2B083, 2B034,2B043, 2B041 and 2B304.

Clarification of Core Technology
We identify the core technologies of Company O. The analysis focus on four main models of Company O products. In a previous study, (4) the voice of customer was translated into the technological words. The same method is used to obtain Company O's core technology. Figure 7 shows the results of the analysis for "mechanism".
As shown in Table 1, the words 'efficiently cut various types of grass' and 'a stable run' are common to all four models. These two words are the core technologies of Company O.

RESULT OF ANALYSIS
The analysis so far has revealed the main codes of the mower and the core technologies of Company O. As shown in Figure 8, comparing Themecode ratio of the patents for the mower products as a whole and for Company O's patents, we found that the ratios for both are similar.

CONCLUSION
Our hypothesis is that, by using patent information, it is possible to observe changes in technology. In particular, we hypothesize that, by using the QFD methodology, it is possible to understand the changes in a company's core technology from a micro perspective.
The results of the analysis showed that, using patent information, it was possible to observe changes in product-related technology and in the company's core technology.
The purpose of this case study is also to provide an example of analysis from a micro perspective using a company's core technology. As a result of the analysis, changes in technology from a micro perspective could be obtained.