"Fuzzy front end" practices in innovating Japanese companies

In this paper, we report on the results of a large-scale study about typical front-end-related innovation practices in 553 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We explore typical activities concerning the generation and assessment of new product ideas, the reduction of technological as well as market uncertainty and front end planning. Finally, we report on differences between successful and unsuccessful companies. Our study confirms earlier findings about the frequent use of creativity techniques in Japan during the process of idea generation. We also find companies to intensively involve upper management and customers into NPD projects. While integrating upper management is of vital importance for assessing new product ideas, integrating customers and users is primarily used to developing product ideas and concepts. We further find evidence that successful companies integrate their customers more frequently in the process of developing and assessing new product ideas than non successful companies. In addition, the former integrate customer requirements into their product definitions more often and also translate these requirements into technical specifications more frequently than non-successful companies. Finally, successful companies more often systematically plan a project prior to its start than unsuccessful ones. --New product development,Japanese firms,planning,success innovation

The structure and behavior of the arctic cyclone in summer analyzed by the JRA-25/JCDAS data

AbstractIn this study, three-dimensional structures and the life-time behavior of arctic cyclones are investigated as case studies, using reanalysis data of JRA-25 and JCDAS. In recent years, arctic region has undergone drastic warming in conjunction with the reduced sea ice concentration in summer. The rapid reduction of the sea ice concentration is explained, to some extent, by a pressure dipole of the arctic cyclone and Beaufort high over the Arctic Ocean. This paper presents some case studies for the structure of the arctic cyclone.It is found by the analysis of this study that the arctic cyclone indicates many differences in structure and behavior compared with the mid-latitude cyclone. The arctic cyclones move rather randomly in direction over the Arctic Ocean. The arctic cyclone has a barotropic structure in the vertical from the surface to the stratosphere. The arctic cyclone detected at the sea level pressure is connected with the polar vortex at the 500 hPa level and above. Importantly, the arctic cyclone has a cold core in the troposphere and a warm core around the 200 hPa level. The mechanism of the formation is discussed based on the analyzed structure of the arctic cyclones

Sparse modeling approach to extract spectral functions with covariance of Euclidean-time correlators of lattice QCD

We present our sparse modeling study to extract spectral functions from Euclidean-time correlation functions. In this study covariance between different Euclidean times of the correlation function is taken into account, which was not done in previous studies. In order to check applicability of the method, we firstly test it with mock data which imitate possible charmonium spectral functions. Then, we extract spectral functions from correlation functions obtained from lattice QCD at finite temperature.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, talk presented at the 40th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2023), July 31st - August 4th, 2023, Fermi National Accelerator Laborator

A sensitive cloud chamber without radioactive sources

We present a sensitive diffusion cloud chamber which does not require any radioactive sources. A major difference from a commonly used chamber is use of a heat sink as its bottom plate. A result of a performance test of the chamber is given.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, iopart.cls, figures and references adde

Widely Extended [OIII] 88 um Line Emission around the 30 Doradus Region Revealed with AKARI FIS-FTS

We present the distribution map of the far-infrared [OIII] 88um line emission around the 30 Doradus (30 Dor) region in the Large Magellanic Cloud obtained with the Fourier Transform Spectrometer of the Far-Infrared Surveyor onboard AKARI. The map reveals that the [OIII] emission is widely distributed by more than 10' around the super star cluster R136, implying that the 30 Dor region is affluent with interstellar radiation field hard enough to ionize O^{2+}. The observed [OIII] line intensities are as high as (1-2) x 10^{-6} W m^{-2} sr^{-1} on the peripheral regions 4'-5' away from the center of 30 Dor, which requires gas densities of 60-100 cm^{-3}. However the observed size of the distribution of the [OIII] emission is too large to be explained by massive stars in the 30 Dor region enshrouded by clouds with the constant gas density of 10^2 cm^{-3}. Therefore the surrounding structure is likely to be highly clumpy. We also find a global correlation between the [OIII] and the far-infrared continuum emission, suggesting that the gas and dust are well mixed in the highly-ionized region where the dust survives in clumpy dense clouds shielded from the energetic photons.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan (PASJ

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多胡圭一教授國井和郎教授退官記念