Functional Description of Machine Tools and its Application to Marketability Analyses

SUMMARY This paper proposes a new methodology for systematically and rationally analyzing product marketability, after choosing the machine tool as an objective. The proposed methodology is based on the functional description of machine tools as so far developed. Machining centres of Japanese, Korean and German makes are classified using the functional description, their characteristic features analysed and their competitiveness in the world market compared. These results verify the availability of the functional description for marketability analysis to a large extent, simultaneously providing some guidelines regarding how to find the market niche. In addition, the paper implies a possibility that the functional description is applicable to the historical investigation of the influence of international technology transfer.