Defining the technical roadmap in filtering technology for hydraulic excavators using customers' patent information

摘要

Today, final products are assembled with various parts provided by many suppliers working to satisfy their customer's demands. Here, business to business (B2B) exists in the real business situation. However, while suppliers investigate their competitors' patent information, they have paid little attention on their customers' patent information, which is crucial in determining the direction of R.&D. The purpose of this research is to highlight the importance of analysing the customers' patent information and proposing how to draft 'technical roadmap' of future products by using customers' patent information. In this paper, we focused on a supplier producing oil-filter for construction machinery industry and proposed a process on how to define the technical roadmap of the supplier through customers' patent information.