Research and Development (R&D)
One of the goals of Istasazeh Co. R&D department is to apply new ideas in engineering and project management to increase the efficiency and productivity of the organization. Over the years, the company has taken steps towards sales management and value engineering in its projects by integrating the R&D department and setting up the Project Management Office (PMO). Steps that started with documenting project records and combining new ideas recommended in the R&D department has been able to continue the path to cost-effectiveness of projects by considering the current and future needs of the industry.
What is research and development?
- The term (R&D or Research and Development) means constructive activities arising from a systematic foundation that aims to increase human knowledge and social culture and use this knowledge in new applications.
- Today, research and development around the developed world has become a major industrial and governmental activity and has become organizations that in addition to responding to industrial and technological issues, are also involved in political, security and cultural issues of society.
R&D goals
Goal means the quality or desired point that the Istasazeh Co. is trying to achieve. This goal is determined based on the understanding of necessities, priorities and needs in the individual, organizational and national framework, and based on this, some R&D goals can be named:
- Increasing the knowledge and culture of society through invention, initiative and innovation
- Finding potential applications for new achievements and awareness
- Satisfying human needs and creating welfare and comfort
- Increasing the productivity of human activities, which also includes increasing incomes
- Increasing self-reliance, along with facilitating and accelerating things
The necessity for R&D
- Increased competitiveness and survival motivation have led many organizations to focus their activities on main products and competencies. For this reason, Istasazeh Co. intends to invest in research and create technological innovations. Research in organizations is done with the aim of supporting innovation, and research and development activities should create new business opportunities or transform the existing businesses of the organization.
- According to statistics in Iran, less than 2% of industrial centers, companies and factories have R&D departments. While large industrial companies and institutions in the world devote up to one third (30%) of their income to research and development, in Iran this figure is less than 1% in most centers and industries.
- In the list of the top 50 companies in research and development, there are 20 American companies, 18 European companies, 9 Japanese companies and 3 miscellaneous companies, and by looking at these statistics, we can understand why the United States and Japan are always the best innovators and producers of science and knowledge.
R&D in Iran
Unfortunately, in Iran, there is no intrinsic motivation for research and development in most enterprises, which is due to the following factors:
- Financial problems that most companies face and need financial support to strengthen and expand their operations.
- Old machines and equipment that play an important role in lowering the quality of production and increasing costs
- Lack of copyright in research and development for new innovations companies face. In other words, the lack of intellectual property rights of inventions reduces the confidence to invest in product innovation.
- Lack of equal business opportunities for companies is another obstacle, because it is not possible for all companies to enter the global market. Such problems have led to a general change in the concept of research and development in Iran and change from the direction of research and innovation to reverse engineering.
R&D and industry
R&D departments in factories are the core of research activities in the industrial sector. These departments mainly pursue activities such as product quality improvement, new product design, process optimization, technology transfer and absorption, acquisition of technical knowledge for production, etc. within the framework of industry owners’ policies.
The performance of the R&D department is the result of a systematic collaboration of a set of main subsystems that work together to perform the tasks expected of the R&D department. The main subsystems in Istasazeh Co. are:
- Strategy review subsystem
- Project planning subsystem
- Project execution subsystem and exploitation of project results
- The R&D management subsystem, as the R&D headquarters, is responsible for supporting and leading and overseeing the performance of the company’s other subsystems.
The R&D department alone is not required to carry out all R&D projects, and in many cases all or part of the results of a project are provided from outside the organization.
R&D methodology
Doing R&D activities does not necessarily mean being a leader in product technology, and in principle many organizations, such as Istasazeh Co., do not pursue such a risky strategy. Some organizations with strong executive management technology capabilities and sufficient financial resources seek to develop a new product and take advantage of environmental opportunities in a R&D strategy.
Offensive strategy requires the use of extensive facilities and capabilities that many organizations are not able to provide. So many companies are looking for new technologies and copying them by developing a defensive strategy. Defensive strategy is less risky and costly but is not necessarily technically feasible. The success of a defensive strategy depends on its high capability in reverse engineering and copying processes.
What we want from R&D in industry is the production of science or the better exploitation of a science. It is accepted that several factors affect the production of science in a system. These important intellectual factors to form the path of science are:
- R&D costs
- Number of researchers
- Government support systems
- Types of national and religious systems and so on
Among of them, R&D costs and the number of researchers are considerable.