Month: March 2019

TECHNOLOGICAL GLOSSARY

Technology development: Development of products, processes, equipment and operating methods. It includes research and pilot processes.

Sustainable development and social responsibility: The production of the present must not affect the production of the future, seeking to rehabilitate, preserve and conserve renewable resources and the quality of the environment. It implies taking responsibility for the impact. Its objective is to prevent and mitigate the environmental impact that productive activities may cause on the natural heritage and the quality of life.

Technological development: Set of activities through which seeks to improve or generate new processes or products in the production or administration of the company. It includes one or more forms of research (basic, applied, experimental), but also refers to activities such as adapting technology, solving technical problems and standardization (analysis, inspection and testing of raw materials and inputs, machines and products) ).

Technological unemployment: It is understood as a probable consequence of the application of new technologies or of the substitution of some process by another one that is more intensive in the use of capital.

Technological diagnosis: It consists of systematizing and analyzing the pertinent data of information and technological intelligence; qualify, in relation to quality and productivity, the level of technological modernity of the company in relation to competitors; qualify the potential of own technological development and by technology acquisitions, with reference to the tendencies indicated by the technological prospective; identify bottlenecks related to technology that prevent the company from moving towards higher levels of quality in processes and products; identify specific lines of research and development and technological innovation to increase the capacity for competition in general and for the improvement of quality, in particular.

Diffusion: Process of propagation of a technical innovation among potential users (adoption of a new technique), its continuous improvement and adaptation.

Dimension: One of the criteria under which a certain indicator can be analyzed within an organization.

Effectiveness: Systematic generation of consistent results integrating effectiveness and efficiency. Customer satisfaction is achieved with the optimal use of resources.

Efficiency: Contribution of the obtained results to the fulfillment of global objectives (of the society); relevance, relevance, validity or socioeconomic utility of the results (predefined objectives).

Efficiency: Measures the amount of resources used to achieve the proposed objective, that is, it relates the degree of use of the resources of the production process.

Link between basic and applied research. The presence of efficient connectors that link the results of laboratory research with industrial practice. The realization of industrial scaling for new products. Participation in this process of highly qualified personnel (PhD level), interaction with research centers and universities.

Entity: Any important thing within the organization that deserves to be embodied in a data model.

Support entities: The existence of entities for the development of innovation, through the provision of advice and funding such as: Institute for the promotion of Innovation, INNOVAR, TECNOS, CORPODIB. Technological centers for research such as CORPOICA; CENICAFE, this project that presents the current situation of innovation and gives guidelines for improvement.

Strategy: Mode of relating to the environment; form (ways, modalities) of reaching the proposed objectives. In the strategies, the philosophy of the company is specified. The strategies express the way in which the company hopes to sustain itself or increase its participation in the market. The strategies can be of a financial nature, focus on marketing and marketing or be oriented to technological development. The strategies also show the aspirations of the company, regarding the positioning in its productive sector and the capacity to generate greater added value.

Organizational structure: The organizational structure is the way to group human and material resources, defining the role of each unit, in the sense of making its administration more viable and achieving the objectives of the organization. When technological development becomes an important strategy, the challenge is to make it a systematic and permanent activity. For this, it is necessary to adapt the organization and structure of the firm, defining the functions, responsibilities and means.

Technological evaluation: Process of systematic analysis, prediction and assessment of a wide range of impacts on society, the environment and the economy, related to selection and technological change, in order to identify public policy, investment and production options . Evaluation of the social, environmental and economic costs of existing technologies, of the form of environmental pollution, social disturbances, infrastructure costs, etc., anticipation of probable harmful effects of new technologies; design methods to minimize these costs and evaluation of the possible benefits of the introduction of new or alternative technologies in terms of social, environmental and economic needs. The technological evaluation has tended to be translated, however, into a relevance analysis and cost-benefit calculations. The evaluation of technological alternatives is an internal process of the company, consisting of the identification of technological offers, national and international, in the individual valuation of said offers and in the determination of their impacts, based on the knowledge and experience of the company.

Evaluation: Process oriented to decision making and action, which seeks to determine the relevance, effectiveness and impact of the use of resources, activities and results based on pre-established objectives. The evaluation, which can be “exante” or “expost”, constitutes a dynamic, technical, systematic, rigorous, transparent, open and participatory process, supported by data, sources, information and diverse agents and explicitly incorporated in the process of taking decisions. The evaluation unit (evaluator) must be independent of the political authorities and executors involved, and have credibility and autonomy. Currently, multi-criteria evaluation methods are used in a wide variety of problems, including the evaluation of projects.

Critical success factor: Those areas where satisfactory performance is essential in order for a business to be successful; characteristics, conditions or variables that have a direct influence on customer satisfaction in a specific business process; the group of activities that must be carried out correctly if a vision is to be achieved.

Environmental management: Activity oriented to the application of modern management principles and techniques to the process of sustainable production, seeking to establish alternatives for the use of natural resources that are economically, ecologically and socially sustainable. Its objective is to incorporate environmental considerations in the planning processes and in the definition of development programs and projects.

Quality management: proactive management of productive, administrative and commercial resources to ensure the achievement of the global objectives defined in the plans and development strategies of the organization When the company is organized to perform with quality products and each of the operations productive and administrative, it is possible to achieve significant changes through a series of innovations that use quality control. The organization for continuous improvement favors creativity and constitutes a very important input to achieve mastery of productive and administrative technologies.

Information management: The company must document its technological development activities so that the institutional memory is kept up-to-date, the collective use of knowledge is facilitated, mistakes are not repeated and efficiency is achieved in the actions. Business information today must be conceived as a source of knowledge and decision, not only of registration. The information at managerial level must be designed to generate knowledge and this to allow opportunity of action that at the same time generates innovation.

Management of technological innovation: It is the process aimed at organizing and directing the available resources, both human and technical and economic, with the aim of increasing the creation of new knowledge, generating ideas that allow obtaining new products, processes and services or improving existing, and transfer those same ideas to the manufacturing and marketing phases.

Personnel management: Innovative companies must have an excellent management of human resources, therefore it is a fundamental variable for business success nowadays. The management of creative human teams must take into account the following aspects: motivate creativity, give spaces to generate ideas, accept and practice suggestions given by workers, select people with innovative capacity and interdisciplinarity. The transformation of companies must be advanced through human resources, implementing a model focused on leadership and the improvement of various aspects of the company and people. Through the human factor companies improve their operational efficiency and achieve high performance teams. These elements produce efficient and flexible organizations oriented to the client and obtain better results.

Technology management: The process by which companies manage their technological resources, understood in terms of hard technologies incorporated in machinery and soft technologies semicorporated in advisory or training courses, or disincorporated in the form of manuals, books, plans, patents, among others.

Management of the human factor: The way in which the human factor intervenes and manages innovation. It consists of four elements: The training of staff constantly. The promotion of teamwork. The integration of the personnel and the creation and application of strategic personnel groups (mixture of professionals with people from the base of the organizational charts). The development of creativity in all the staff.

Human Resource Management: Way to manage human resources, motivating them towards continuous improvement. The elements that constitute it are: 1) Training and ongoing training; 2) Stimulus to creativity; 3) Motivation; 4) Leadership and 5) Teamwork.

Technological management: Application of management techniques in support of technological innovation processes. The ability of the company to make knowledge and information productive. As a branch of industrial engineering, technological management is defined as the set of activities and business decisions related to the technological variable, within a holistic and systemic vision of the organization, in order to be competitive in the global market. Technological management is an interdisciplinary field in which knowledge of engineering, science and administration is mixed in order to carry out the planning, development and implementation of technological solutions that contribute to the achievement of the strategic and tactical objectives of an organization. In technological management, technological needs and opportunities are identified, and technological solutions are planned, designed, developed and implemented; it constitutes a process of administration of technological research activities and the transfer of its results to the productive units.

Enabler: Practices, processes or methods that facilitate the implementation of a best practice and allow satisfying a critical factor of success, help explain why the performance indicated by a benchmark.

Management indicator: It is a measure of the condition of a process or event at a given moment; is a relationship between quantitative or qualitative variables, which allows observing the situation and trends of change generated with the object or phenomenon observed, with respect to objectives and expected goals and expected influences. The indicators can be values, units, indexes, statistical series and, together, they can provide an overview of the situation of a process, a business or the general state of a company. By using them in a timely and up-to-date manner, the indicators allow for adequate control over a given situation; The main reason for its importance is that it is possible to predict and act based on the positive or negative trends observed in overall performance.

Adaptation of technology: Process during which foreign technologies are modified in order to accommodate them to local conditions in terms of market size, raw materials and consumer needs, among others.

Total quality management: It refers to the establishment of policies, objectives, annual plans, strategies and quality activities, which lead to comprehensive quality through the participation of everyone in the company. It also includes the formalization of quality in the company through structures, responsibilities, standards, procedures, methods, tools and techniques determined to achieve it. It contains all the required documentation including national and international standards that govern the product and process.

Acquisition of technology not incorporated in goods: In the form of patents, licenses, know-how, brands, projects, models and services with technological content.

Acquisition of technology: Selection of the technological inputs that are more attractive to acquire than to develop. Includes selection, negotiation and transfer.

Assimilation of technology: It is when the person or company that acquires it is able to exercise total control over it, understanding as such the full application to the productive activities in which it is used, its possible reproduction, adaptation and improvement, application to new situations within the company and distribution of it to third parties.

Technological audit: Follow-up to the technology that was acquired, adapted or developed to establish its goodness and real use.

Benchmark: Measuring best-in-class achievement, benchmark or standard measure to be compared, this novel is recognized as the standard of excellence for a specific business process.

Generic Benchmarking: Benchmarking process that compares a function function of a particular company or process with two or more independent companies in your industry.

Internal benchmarking: The comparison process carried out within an organization between similar units or business processes.

Benchmarking: An organizational improvement tool based on the evaluation and continuous analysis of practices; processes; policies and strategies recognized in the market as successful; for its subsequent adaptation and assimilation in an organization.

Biotechnology: Use and manipulation of biological processes using microbial agents, plant or animal cells or their derivatives to generate or modify products and processes, improve plants or animals and develop microorganisms for their application in agricultural activities, health, food production; project and selection of equipment such as enzymatic reactors, etc.

Data Warehouse: See Data Warehouse.

Productive chain: The productive chains are the continuous and discontinuous flows of products, processes and aggregation of values, which follow the primary products until reaching the final consumer.

Technical change: In a broad sense, it is an advance, a change in technique (production method) or the adoption of a different technique. Technical change refers to obtaining a specific product with a different amount or proportion of inputs (labor and capital), that is, a zero displacement along the production function; the qualitative improvement of existing products or processes or the introduction of new processes or products. A technical change occurs through innovation and, to some extent, diffusion. Changes in technique do not necessarily imply new technology; they may simply consist of imitation and diffusion of existing techniques or substitution of factors. Play an important role in models of economic growth; However, there is some controversy regarding the extent to which it is an exogenous factor in economic growth. Sometimes it is confused with the terms technological change and technical progress.

Technological change: It is an advance in technology, an increase in technical knowledge or in the available set of techniques; a change in technology itself, in a strict sense. It is a change within the technical relations of production. Technological change is a process closely related to technological research, invention, innovation and diffusion. Technological change can be defined as the process through which societies acquire and put into practice new and better ways of producing new and better goods and services. It is a social process that presents a complex cause-and-effect relationship with cultural transformations. It also influences the structures, mentalities and values ​​of society; which, in turn, condition technological innovations. There are several motivations that lead a company to value technological change, some of an endogenous nature and others of an exogenous nature.

Cycle P.H.V.A. (Plan, Do, Check, Act). The P.H.V.A. is a managerial conception that dynamizes the relationship between man and processes and seeks to control them based on the establishment, maintenance and improvement of standards, a task that is advanced through the definition of project specifications (quality standards), technical specifications of process and operating procedures. This cycle effectively helps to adopt and monitor the processes of a company, as long as it is constituted in an endless procedure, that is to say, that is planned, an action is taken, it is verified if the results were the expected and acted about these results to restart the cycle.

Competitiveness: In general terms, competitiveness refers to the capacity of an entity (organization, region or country) to create added value and increase its wealth by managing assets and processes, enhancing local and regional factors based on its internationalization within of a project of economic and social development. Competitiveness is the ability of a company, sector, region or country to maintain, grow or expand or diversify in a market. The competitiveness of the biotechnology sector food and beverages is a measure of the ability of economic agents (producers, industrialists and traders) to design, produce and sell goods whose attributes in terms of prices, environmental sustainability and satisfaction of needs and demands are combined to form a more attractive package than that of similar products offered by competitors, taking into account that the final judge is the national and international market. What is important for competitiveness (and productivity) is not the amount of technological research, but the ability to frame technological developments (innovations, technical progress), within a company strategy.

Conceptualization of technological innovation. It consists of the way in which technological innovation is interpreted within the sector. It consists of three elements: The interpretation of innovation as a process that seeks to introduce new products, processes or internal improvements into the market. The interpretation of innovation as a process of technology transfer. The interpretation of innovation as research and development activities that do not need to be commercialized.

Ad hoc query: It is a query that can not be easily satisfied by means of a data model previously constructed.

Technical assistance contract: It is the set of activities dedicated to advising and training a certain entity in the solution of its technical problems during a certain period of time.

License Agreement: Is the permission granted by the grantor or provider of the technology to another person or company to exploit a patent, a registered trademark, an industrial model or drawing and a secret process during a determined period.

Patent contract: It is the exclusive right, granted under the Law, for the exploitation of a technical innovation and that excludes other parties from the production, sale, import and use of the product that is the subject of the patent. It is a form of industrial property.

Management control: The management control is a managerial, integral and strategic instrument that, supported by indicators, indexes and tables produced in a systematic, periodic and objective way, allows the organization to be effective to attract resources, efficient to transform them and effective for channel them. Management control is a system of statistical, financial, administrative and operational information that, placed at the service of the organization’s management, allows it to take correct or timely decisions, adopt corrective measures that correspond and control the evolution over time of the main variables and processes.

Creation of technology: It is the search for original solutions to existing problems that require a technological solution, whether applied to processes in machinery and equipment or in people in the form of knowledge or training.

Creativity of professionals. The techniques and mechanisms used to encourage and develop the creativity of the people directly involved with the innovation process, especially professionals. The sector’s concern for encouraging creativity.

Business culture: Incorporated in the principles, behaviors, norms, beliefs and values ​​that constitute the expression of the business philosophy. It defines the way of thinking of the company, the way of acting.

Organizational culture: The culture is specific to each organization, including the values, beliefs and behaviors that are consolidated and shared during the business life. The leadership style at the level of senior management, the rules, procedures and general characteristics of the members of the company complete the combination of elements that make up the culture of a company. Organizational culture is the way of “thinking”, “feeling” and “acting” of organizations. It must be developed around effectiveness, whose main element is the self-learning that is achieved through the search for what influences the behavior of people, inquiring about what motivates and “moves” to do.

Data Mart: Data Warehouse limited in scope and / or approach.

Data Warehouse Global: Data Warehouse that covers the information needs

of the organization as a whole.

Data Warehouse: A copy of transactional data specifically structured for queries and analysis, which is Oriented towards topics, with Integrated information, which supports variations over time and whose information is not volatile.

DBMS: Abbreviation for Database Management System.

Technological disaggregation: It is the breakdown of each of the components of a technological package for the production and distribution of a good or a service. It seeks to disaggregate spinal and peripheral technology in order to improve the negotiating position of the acquirer, reduce the cost and volume of acquisition, generate demand for local goods and services and stimulate the dissemination and assimilation of technology.

Process technology: Refers to the conditions, procedures and forms of organization necessary to combine inputs, human resources and capital goods in an appropriate manner to produce a good or a service. It usually has to do with process manuals, plant manuals, performance calculations, material and energy balances, distribution of equipment, etc.

Product technology: It is the part of the technological package related to the standards, specifications and general quality and presentation requirements that a good or a service must fulfill. If you want to create a package where the product technology is predominant, you should have information regarding the description and drawings of the product, the manuals of use, application and maintenance of the same, the formulas and compositions, the specifications of raw materials, assembly instructions, tolerance, etc., as well as industrial property issues such as patents and trademarks.

Cutting-edge technology: It is the most modern of all. It usually requires a high capital investment for its acquisition and few companies own it.

Disincorporated technology: It is one whose knowledge has been extracted from people or objects.

Dynamic technology: That which has a high development through the time of validity of the technology.

Hard technology: The part of knowledge that refers to equipment, products, facilities, processes and materials developed by an organization. Hard technology refers to the mechanical aspects or hardware. It refers to the automatic and systematic, in this the risk is zero because it does not involve the emotional part of the people; It contemplates everything that is protocolized and is rigid.

Emerging technology: It is one that is appearing in the economic and industrial field and is being used by some companies.

Static technology: Represents low level of development through the time of validity of the technology.

Embedded technology: These are technologies that are neither modern nor primitive.

Acquisition of Technology Incorporated into Capital: those situations in which concepts, ideas and methods are incorporated into the firm through the purchase of new capital goods and productive inputs, in which case the acquisition of Technology “incorporated into capital will be discussed. 

Acquisition of Technology not incorporated into Capital: those circumstances in which such incorporation is the result of a research activity carried out either routinely or not outside the firm or at the request of the latter, in which case we will be referring to the acquisition of technology “disincorporated or not incorporated into capital”.

Free technology: Public domain technology, which can be accessed without restrictions. Knowledge is available in full.

Core technology: A set of knowledge that are essential, inherent, specific, specific to a project, service, product or administrative technique. Such knowledge characterizes the corresponding activity by way of its basic properties and requirements.

Modern technology: It is the one produced in the last decades. It is not the most advanced.

Obsolete technology: It is the one that has been completely surpassed by another more recent one because the new technology needs less capital, less work or less of the two factors to produce the same.

Peripheral technology: Set of knowledge that are specific to a process, product or service and that are necessary for the use of core technologies; It is related to all knowledge that is not the exclusive domain of a branch of the production of goods or services, but with those that can be applied to many different activities.

Primitive technology: It is one that has been used since ancient times, requires little capital and a lot of manpower. It does not produce large profits, therefore it does not develop the specialization of the workers, nor a rapid growth of capital.

Secret technology: It is one whose knowledge is protected. It is very difficult to have access to it or its cost is very high.

Technology: In its most general meaning, it is the set of ways and ways of doing things or the set of systematized knowledge for the production of a good or a service. Often it is scientific knowledge but also knowledge organized in another way, applied systematically to the production and distribution of goods and services. Technology is the set of knowledge and methods for the design, production and distribution of goods and services, including those incorporated into the means of work, labor, processes, services and organization. Technology is driven by need, by satisfying the needs of society, the economy and business. There is a practice of privatization and restricted access to technological knowledge. Technology is a system of technical knowledge, systematic knowledge of practical or industrial arts; It consists of a series of empirical techniques, traditional knowledge, craftsmanship, skills, skills, procedures and experiences that are not based on science. Technology reflects and is determined both by the technical relations of production and by the social relations of production (it is not neutral), within a given social formation; it constitutes a concrete response to specific social economic conditions.

Trend towards quality: The clarity in the objectives of the innovation, oriented towards the search of the quality of the products and the continuous improvement within the company.

Technology transfer: Technology transmission process (technical knowledge) and its assimilation, adaptation, diffusion and reproduction by a productive device different from the one that generated it. The appropriation of technology includes knowing its nature (process, product, tacit), the effectiveness of legal protection mechanisms (patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, intellectual property) and complementary capabilities (marketing, quality control and support). On sales). The transfer of technology has the following modalities: sale or purchase of machinery and equipment, licensing agreements through which the use of legally owned technology is authorized, Know-How agreements when there are no patents, technical assistance, training, contracts for administration and marketing, research and development services, consulting services, engineering services, “turnkey” contracts, etc. The transfer of technology requires the issuance of a technology contract, an agreement by means of which a transferor discloses to a concessionaire the technology to execute an operation and / or license for the use of technical knowledge. Among the basic characteristics for the transfer of technology are: the degree of complexity, level of maturity, investment, characteristics compared with new technologies and replace, the economic environment, the scientific and technological environment of the country, the company is innovative, information on innovations, benefits expected by the user and the provider, costs, knowledge and legislation, among others.

Internal transfer of technology: It occurs between companies of the same type, by a producer of capital goods or raw materials, by a technical research or information center.

Real technology transfer: It occurs when the technology acquired is received by the country’s scientific and technological structure or by companies that carry out processes of disaggregation, assimilation and adaptation of these to local needs.

Transplantation of technology: Process by which acquired technologies are used without carrying out processes of disaggregation, assimilation or adaptation in them.

Vision: Provides the frame of reference of what the company wants and expects to see in the future. The corporate vision points the way that allows top management to establish the course to achieve the expected development of the organization in the future. It must have dimensions in time, be broad, inclusive, understood by the members of the entire organization, realistic and possible.