Analyzing influence factors of technology transfer using fuzzy set theory

In the face of the era of speedy revolution of high technology, the advanced technology becomes one of the key drivers to enhance productivity in a firm or even in a country. In order to compete in the global environment, the ability and effectiveness of acquiring new technology are essential for firms, especially for the traditional machinery industry. In Taiwan, the societal structure is built on the foundation of small-medium enterprises (SMEs). Thus most new technologies need and depend on the technology transfer (TT) from international firms and research institutes. Due to the complicity of influence factors of TT, such as features of industry, technology, organization, and talent, difficulties are encountered in evaluating the effectiveness of TT. This study develops a rule-based decision support mechanism using fuzzy set theory and the method of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate the effectiveness of TT. The characteristic of adopting fuzzy set theory is to construct the membership function for those features of influence factors and differentiate the indistinct linguistic terms in order to match true conditions. Finally this study discusses the hierarchical influence factors of TT and provides suggestions for machinery firms with respect to TT effectiveness.