Project

Summary

The Romanian machine industry has reached the stage of development, where it can arrive at a global competitive stage only through the collaboration with international research institutes and companies. The Center of Product Development is highly interested in a partnership with the Department of Machine Elements and Tribology from University “POLITEHNICA” of Bucharest, ROMANIA. Through the transfer of expertise coming from an exchange of students and researchers, we would like to extend its capabilities in distributed and decentralized product development. The collaboration of Swiss and Romanian institutes should thus lead to knowledge and experience on both sides and initiate new ideas for products, which can be marketed and produced in both countries, and, ultimately, globally.

Background

The Center for Product Development has already participated in a successful institutional partnership with Romanian partners in the field of ecological aspects of the design process. One of the former partner institutes, the Department of Machine Elements and Tribology from University “POLITEHNICA” of Bucharest, ROMANIA, is strongly interested in a new collaboration in the field of product development.

The main cause for this collaboration is the rapidly developing Romanian industry.

Currently a great number of small and medium enterprises (SME) are starting the following activities:

• Fixing the general objectives of the enterprises
• Evaluating the market
• Adapting products to the needs of the market
• Defining technical and quality standards
• Estimating the costs for production and trading activities
• Benchmarking the products and activities under defined economical criteria

Although carrying out these activities is time-consuming and cost intensive for these enterprises, this effort is carried out by many SMEs and is repeated with each new product. In order to become competitive in the global market and to reduce the time to market of a new product, it is highly recommended to use modern information technology combined with adequate tools and standardized processes.

In the recent years, the Center for Product Development at the ETH Zurich Switzerland has been involved in many projects in the field of product development. Therefore, the Center for Product Development has the following interests in this collaboration:

As the world has become more global, it has become more important to have global research exchange between institutions and industry. The Center of Product Development has placed importance on giving students and research staff the opportunity to gain experience on international projects, and to work in foreign countries. As a result connections to other institutes around the world e.g. MIT (USA), University of Montreal (Canada), Clemson University (USA), Univesidad Tecnica Federico Maria (Chile), have been established.

Because research in the field of distributed product development is a major aspect at the center for product development, collaboration with eastern enterprises and universities in order to develop the needed processes and tools to support the engineers on this fields will provide valuable experience.