The impact of "digital manufacturing" on technology management

Circumstances in the manufacturing industry have been rapidly changing. The market, user needs and manufacturing infrastructures are already not what they once were. Globalization of production and fabless operation of Japanese domestic production are strongly required. To achieve these demands, it is necessary to speed up manufacturing processes and to extend global production in the Japanese manufacturing field.To achieve these objectives, "digital manufacturing" can be defined. Digital manufacturing is a methodology for manufacturing which uses tangible knowledge (i.e., digital values) and information technology (IT). In digital manufacturing, the ambiguity of tacit knowledge in manufacturing should be eliminated thoroughly, and the tacit knowledge should be transformed into tangible knowledge, such as numerical values and/or equations and finally into digital values