Title: People-oriented R&D trends: is your R&D investment paying off?

Authors: Franklin L. Moses, Jack I. Laveson

Addresses: Principal Scientist, Training Research Laboratory USA. ' Individual Mobilization Augmentee, US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, USA

Abstract: Research and development (R&D) in human factors, training, and personnel systems technology shows a small yet steady growth in industry|s independent research and development (IR&D) projects, but none in defence. This finding is based on an analysis of defence and industry trends from (fiscal years) 1981-88. Trends were determined from the training and personnel systems technology (TPST) portion of defence R&D and from the professional staff years (PSY) of IR&D spent in the same areas. The amount of people-related (that is, TPST-type) IR&D in industry increased both as a percentage of all IR&D and in the level of effort during the analysis period. The percentage of IR&D increased in human factors, but decreased in simulation & training devices. Two other categories – education & training, and manpower & personnel – were relatively constant. Within human factors, four topics accounted for the increases: advanced (computer) controls and displays; speech (voice) recognition & synthesis; AI, expert systems & robotics; and computer-based maintenance & troubleshooting aids. No similar trends are evident in defence R&D. In terms of types of TPST R&D, defence and industry have about the same proportion of effort in development (i.e., application to a potential new product or service). Industry|s basic research accounted for only about 2% of effort, while the defence portion of such research (Budget Category 6.1) was about 7%.

Keywords: defence related R&D; industrial R&D; R&D trends; education R&D; training R&D; personnel systems; research and development; human factors.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.1992.030378

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 1992 Vol.2 No.1, pp.38 - 44

Published online: 15 Dec 2009 *

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