The study of a complex phenomenon such as innovation, influences and effects of which are tangible in manifold contexts, traditionally requires the integration of different levels of analysis and the interaction among distant disciplines. The enterprise appears to be the fundamental agent of economic change; in this context, innovation, by intervening in the sphere of technology, constitutes a fundamental dimension also for social change. In addition, it interacts in the circle of a complex matrix of cultural, economic and institutional factors which are the base of social and economical evolution. In this context, the research questions (RQ) investigated by the authors are: "what is innovation?" [RQ 1] and "which are the main evolutions of innovation management models?" [RQ 2]. Literature on this matter has exponentially evolved in recent years. Nevertheless, innovation literature presents a large heterogeneity of results, while the innovation process concept itself is still poorly understood. In order to investigate the first research question, authors review forms and structures of innovation models developed throughout the years. At the end a discussion on the characteristics of literature evolution, through a strength-weakness analysis, is presented by the authors.
The last two decades have witnessed relevant changes in the economic scenario. After the collapsed of the Eastern block, the East European Countries opened their frontiers to the free market, and encouraged the development of new businesses and new enterprises. At the same time, Nations from Far East, opened new economic policies based on increasing commercial and industrial relations with the most industrialized nations. This world phenomenon is known as globalization. These changes were also promoted by the development of new and more powerful ICT that permit and manage the whole Supply Chain and to successfully support multi sites production strategies. These changes presented a relevant impact also on product design and product life-cycle. Actually now, products are manufactured and used in different continents, with suppliers providing materials from different nations. New models and new instruments have been developed to solve these problems, which are encompassed in the acronym PLM, (Product Life Cycle Management). In this paper, the evolutions of PLM, and its connections with the modem ICT systems will be analyzed and a description will be furnished of a new framework of PLM and its application to an enterprise producing industrial refrigerators mainly in Italy and sold worldwide. This enterprise has to comply with a new regulation (RoHS) that obliged the firm to re-made its own product development process, re-analyze all the components that it uses in production, manage all the data about material composition and organize and develop procedures to collect all the required information. Furthermore, during the project, all these procedures have been implemented on the Enterprise Information System so as to guarantee an efficient informative flow within the firm and among the finn and component suppliers.
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