Influence Factor Analysis of Medical Device Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

The medical device manufacturing industry is an increasingly important pillar of Taiwan's economy. As a contribution towards explicitly understanding Taiwan's sustainable development, this study aimed to deploy both the focus group research method and the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method (the fuzzy DEMATEL method) for exploring critical influence factors, detecting their influential relationships, and investigating their influential intensity. We found that that manufacturing excellence and innovation competence are the two major critical influence dispatchers in the cause group, while service quality is the major critical influence receiver in the effect group. Moreover, operations and logistics management has very little strength of influence on other factors. The analysis results may potentially provide industrial practitioners and government policy makers with additional knowledge about how best to direct research and development in Taiwan's medical device manufacturing industry.