Biological and intelligent manufacturing: Human life-skills applied to technological development

Abstract

Highly competitive settings, characterised by development being promoting by the predominance of knowledge, means that mul-tidisciplinary approaches must be adopted for dealing with specific problems. Indeed, techniques and tools have been created by imitating human beings' behaviour and applying them to productive and technological contexts to increase efficiency and enable a quick response. This paper deals with this topic and presents the results of scientometric-and technological surveillance-based research for revealing life sciences' impact on technological development and its management. It was found that such impact has been mainly reflected in producing concepts and applications for topics such as intelligent manufacturing, biological manufacturing systems and holonic and bionic manufacturing, thereby providing manufacturing and information management with human attributes such as adaptation, self-learning, flexibility and the ability to evolve. It may thus be concluded that technological factor management has been strengthened, based on fields such as biology, thereby leading to direct outcomes regarding production. © 2010.