Abstract

Technology road-mapping (TRM) has become an important issue and has received increasing interest from both academics industry and business sectors. TRM is a powerful and flexible tool widely used in industry. Its principle use is to provide support in the form of strategic management and long-term planning of products or services for future development. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical-review update for the issue of TRM. A case study of power-line communication (PLC) is used by implementing a technology roadmap process based on a data analysis. The studied results indicate the projected PLC trend of Thailand to be in the two areas of technology and market developments. The former indicates smart technological innovations. The latter, however, is not fully developed because broadband power-line communication has an influence only on a specific market. This situation shows that PLC is still playing a role only in some areas, due to business complexity.

Key words: Technology road-mapping, technology forecasting, literature review, technological innovation, power-line communication.