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PROCESNÁ AUTOMATIZÁCIA: Development of projects through industry - academy partnership

Published
by
Ivan Filus
  on  August 7, 2005
  in  Case studies
. 0 Comments

Partnership between the private sector (mainly the SMEs) and the academic institutions is considered as an ideal combination for the technology-based co-operation for the FP project proposals preparation. Eastern Slovak company PROCESNÁ AUTOMATIZÁCIA a.s. Košice has started a co-operation with the Technical university in 2003 and nowadays the company participates in two FP funded projects benefiting from the structures built under this co-operation.

The company

PROCESNÁ AUTOMATIZÁCIA, a. s., Košice (PA), is an IT SME company established in 1992. Currently it has 110 employees and 85 % of them are multilingual IT specialists with a university education. PA has a certified quality management system (ISO 9001:2000). The company is a partner of the Technical University of Košice – in the area of R&D projects (solutions for metallurgical industry - key player in the area is U.S.Steel Košice).

PA provides design, development, implementation, service and maintenance of control and information systems for various industries, systems for planning, management and optimisation of production, material flow and warehouses, complete systems for logistics, transport, software integration, outsourcing, training and consultancy in the IT area. Continue reading ‘PROCESNÁ AUTOMATIZÁCIA: Development of projects through industry - academy partnership’

Régens Rt: Commitment brings results

Published
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Szabolcs Katai
  on  August 7, 2005
  in  Case studies and Innovation policy
. 0 Comments

Régens Rt. [www.regens.hu] is a Hungarian SME which has been consistently increasing its market share in the field of logistics information systems and related fields since its foundation in 1993. Today Régens is a steadily growing company with 35 employees and EUR 1.6m in turnover. One of the key elements in Régens’s success is an emphasis on - and constant investment - in innovation.

Régens is one of the relatively small number of Hungarian SMEs in the IT sector that believe in innovation as a source of competitiveness and have acted consistently with this belief. New products mark this all along the history of the company. One of these products, the Régens CUSTOM[r]S customs system, won the Hungarian Innovation Award in 2002.
Though there have been some Hungarian grants available for innovation support earlier, a new window of opportunity opened in 2004 when Régens realised the potential in the FP6 program of the European Union (though Hungarian organization could participate in the Framework Program as early as of FP4, this was not widely known outside the academic community).

Thus the company has started to explore FP6 opportunities in early 2004, and by early 2006 they became really successful in participating in winning consortia.

One key to this success has been to hire a dedicated person as an international project coordinator whose main task was to build a knowledge base of FP6 opportunities and practical knowledge as well as to actively search for appropriate collaborators and build a network of potential partners in proposals. The coordinator started visiting FP6 events in Hungary as well as international FP6 events.  She established contact with a number of FP6 SSA projects in Hungary and was also an active initiator of an SME network established for exchanging FP6 experiences.

These efforts resulted in Regens taking part in several FP6-IST, FP6-SME, CRAFT and e-Ten proposals over the past two and half years, many of which were indeed successful. One of these is FLUID-WIN, a project which aims at developing an innovative B2B solution in the field of logistics.

Régens builds heavily on innovation in the company strategy, even to the extent that they explicitly integrate innovation activities into their competitive advantage offering and PR activities. Ms. Réka Moksony (moksony.reka@regens.hu) now heads the business development division. She also happens to be the dedicated person the company hired to build the FP6 knowledge of Régens, looks positively into the future and always welcomes potential partners for innovative projects.

IDS Scheer CR: 5 years of experience with EU projects

Published
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Vlastimil Vesely
  on  May 4, 2005
  in  Case studies and EU funding programmes
. 0 Comments

The first experience with the EU projects dates back to 2000-2001, when Software Development Department and Translation Department pooled their knowledge and accepted an offer from one of the IDS partners to participate in the first project proposal (Dromeas) in order to spread activities to Europe and gain international experience.

A great experience was at work in the multicultural environment of international consortium where various cultural influences reflected various methods of work and communication between partners. A very positive finding was that verbal agreements could be trusted. However, to comply with EU requirements, Czech participants had to specify clearly in the consortium agreement the areas of decision-making, responsibilities, project costs, as well as patents and dissemination rights.

Besides projects’ technical outputs, the company’s benefits definitely included international contacts opportunities, information regarding European markets and the possibility to compare the level of professional knowledge with CR. Although the framework programme projects do not always lead to the development of a commercial product ready to be launched on the market (the outcome is usually a prototype), the company has gained and developed knowledge on the latest technologies, which can be exerted in other projects or commercial orders.

After having gained experience in two projects (DROMEAS, HEALTHY MARKET), the team decided to meet a challenge of being coordinator in the DICTATE project, which was submitted in the area of Systems for health professionals (creating a Health knowledge info-structure) and started in summer 2002. The four-year project reaches a budget of 3.5 million Euros. The objective is to develop a system intermediating a voice input of medical data via a pocket computer, transform it into a standard format and give an unambiguous interpretation to the health record of a patient.

Last year, another project proposal was approved with the participation of IDS Scheer in the 6th Framework Programme with the objective to design a system for planning surgical interventions based on a 3D model of the heart and the entire cardiovascular system of a patient. As a technical partner, IDS Scheer CR is responsible for the system functional specifications of the CARTIDIS project.

Besides the IST projects from the Framework Programmes, IDS Scheer CR has an extensive experience with project proposals for eTEN, eContent, CRAFT, FET Open, Interreg and Innovation programmes. The company would like to exploit its knowledge and experience and would like to reflect it in future cooperation with other international as well as local partners.

ICZ: infotizing health care as an opportunity for European projects

Published
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Vlastimil Vesely
  on  May 3, 2005
  in  Case studies and Czech Republic
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The ICZ company belongs to the top system integrators in the Czech Republic. Thanks to its division focused on e-health it ranks among the leading companies in the field of hospital information systems (IS) on the local market. In 2006 the company turnover reached CZK 1 billion. I discussed the division history and its R&D activities with its product manager, Michal Schmidt.

He originally worked as a programmer in the state company Geofyzika. The opportunity to run his own business after 1989 led him and two other colleagues to join the SET joint stock company that won the tender for an information system in a newly built hospital in Breclav. At that time hospitals were introducing their first complex computer systems and so SET could build its system from scratch according to its ideas and without being limited by a reverse compatibility.

Continue reading ‘ICZ: infotizing health care as an opportunity for European projects’

DC Concept: A network player in the information systems market

Published
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Vlastimil Vesely
  on  May 3, 2005
  in  Case studies and Czech Republic
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Since it was established in 2000, the DC Concept Corporation located in Brno has been focusing on the development of unique object oriented information system including an integrated development CASE tool for creating and customizing applications. Currently, the company has twenty employees developing the system and providing technical and business support, and cooperates with approximately other 200 external consultants that deploy the system within the network of 40 partners in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I discussed the development plans with one of the company founders and the executive manager at the same time, Jiri Rychetsky.

Ever since the beginning, the development has been concentrated on creating an information system that would encompass tools for analysts and implementators to be able to easily model business processes for applications supporting production and business. So, the QI information system was developed, and the first installation dates back to 2001. “Due to unique system features that enable the system to be completely customized to fit specific customer’s needs from the data, function as well as price points of view, we named it the First elastic information system. Except for advanced functional and data adaptability, customers are interested in price elasticity, which means that they can choose from tens of options how to finance the system lease”, says Jiri Rychetsky.

Continue reading ‘DC Concept: A network player in the information systems market’

IDS Scheer CR: 5 years of experience with EU projects

Published
by
Vlastimil Vesely
  on  April 29, 2005
  in  Case studies and Czech Republic
. 0 Comments

The very beginnings of the IDS Scheer mark stretch back to 1984, when Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer with his colleagues from Saarland University founded a small consulting company focused on process engineering. Today it is an international company with shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a significant global partner of SAP serving circa 4,000 customers in more than 50 countries around the world.

The Czech branch office has been on the local market since 1994 (originally in partnership with COMSOFT); the complete ownership integration into the parent company was carried out in 2003. IDS Scheer ČR, s.r.o. has the ISO certification for strategic consulting for business processes and support information system solution. A significant part of the product portfolio is represented also by consulting services of SAP system, the leading system of its category on the Czech market, using the company’s own ARIS Value Engineering methodology.

Continue reading ‘IDS Scheer CR: 5 years of experience with EU projects’

T-SOFT: the Czech innovative spin-off managed its first EU trial

Published
by
Vlastimil Vesely
  on  April 28, 2005
  in  Case studies and Czech Republic
. 0 Comments

Innovative companies are often established as spin offs from the research organisations like universities or institutes. The Prague company T-SOFT is in this respect a typical case, however, quite unique within Czech conditions. This is bringing a story based on my interview with Jaroslav Pejcoch, T-SOFT co-founder and director, reporting on how it successfully managed its first EU trial.

Jaroslav Pejcoch worked as the IT director in the Tesla VUST division, which was involved in computer graphics and design system automation. This division previously used to design systems being under embargo, e.g. in the area of design and simulation of integrated circuits. At the beginning of the 90s the state orders finished and the institute was in threat of redundancy. Therefore, together with other colleagues he decided to start a new private company focused on advanced technology - (geo)graphical information systems and risk management systems. In 1991 they gained the first big orders from Unisys, CSA, Cesky Telecom, army and the Ministry of Finance.

Presently T-SOFT is one of the leading companies on the Czech market in the area of crisis management. Crisis management requires mission critical information systems, where any failure can jeopardize the infrastructure existence itself or to impair public safety. This involves areas such as banking, environment and rescue and military bodies of the state. The key features of the IS then must be security, robustness and reliable data back-up emphasis.

Besides development of these systems T-SOFT focuses also on system integration and according to the words of the director, Mr. Pejcoch, it has a competitive advantage in the fact, that it can offer client help with funding, as their source of finance often come from EU funds.

The MEDSI Project
The MEDSI project represented the very first experience of the company with the EU projects. It is a strategic research project (STREP) from the 2nd IST call of the 6th EU Framework Programme submitted in the Improving Risk Management area. The project budget is 4.6 mil. EUR (EU contribution is less than a half) for 18 months and 11 partners from 7 countries (e.g. companies operating in the GIS area, one of them is the Romanian Intergraph, two German companies, further organisations from Portugal, Slovenia, Turkey etc.).

The objective of the project is to develop the web-based integrated set of software services as a tool to enhance the capabilities of crisis planners and crisis managers in both private and governmental organizations. The main effort is put into lowering threats, critical infrastructure protection and also effective and fast support in case of emergency situations. The emphasis is put on standardization (military standards already exist, others often need to be defined) and openness, assuring the interoperability with other systems on national and international levels. The project will be tested in a real environment on the pilot situations of flooding and the terrorist attack in Magdeburg, Germany and Holon, Israel.

Next to the interoperability the solution also involves information accessibility and the ways of sharing information between individual organisations. Presently, when the critical infrastructure of states is mainly private-owned, it is essential to ensure the cooperation of civil and military bodies on the regional and international levels. Another key task is to somehow engage the actual operators of various systems as the banks, utilities and telecommunication companies and others and to offer all these players the corresponding technical support.

“Everything began when we took part in the Technology Centre seminar and started to follow the Ideal-IST database”, said Jaroslav Pejcoch. “The offer to participate in a consortium arrived circa 3 weeks before the project proposal deadline.” We had to make a key decision to leave immediately to Madrid for the coordination meeting, which was the breaking point. The thing was that the non-participating companies weren’t invited to take part in the project and T-SOFT then gradually became one of the key organizations of the consortium. At the end the project went through significant changes before it was finally approved. The original coordinator was during negotiations replaced for the reason of bigger financial stability of the consortium by the operator Telefonica.

The objective of the research projects within the framework programmes is not usually a product ready to market (there are other EU programmes to support innovation of this type), but the methods, procedures and pilot applications. And what were the main benefits for the company? First of all valuable contacts, becoming more confident, gaining professional know-how, international marketing and recognition of cultural habits. The co-funding from the EU side is also beneficial, however, it is not the key point.

T-SOFT was nicely surprised by the positive experience with the competent and professionally skilled EU officers and also by the fact that it managed to gain the project already for its first trial. A large portion of the preparation of the project proposal was done via Internet (T-SOFT provides consortium with extranet SW support). As it is usual, on the whole project composition mainly representatives of four parties participated, while others made comments on the document.

For those interested to participate in EU projects
“If the company does not have European ambitions, it shouldn’t even try for EU projects”, warns Jaroslav Pejcoch. This is an absolute condition, however, not sufficient. Further it is essential to choose the research area, which is currently open in the call (i.e. where it is possible to submit the project proposal to). Last but not least it is necessary to find partners for consortium, e.g. via the Ideal-IST service, and to clearly define project benefits for ourselves and what the company can offer to others (its role in the project).

As far as the rules go, which should be change in the 7th framework programme, he mentions the tax relief for the research outcomes and the need of co-funding the input costs for the project proposal from the side of the national government, as it happens in some countries (the project proposal is accepted in very few cases and that means, that especially a small company takes a big risk). The problem is also in the management cost, which in the case of international projects with many partners reach at least 20% of the total cost. The 7% limit defined by the European Committee is then rather amusing.

Cooperation offer
T-SOFT has already prepared project proposals for Structural Funds, it was involved in the projects within the PHARE and Copernicus programs. Its biggest interest is aimed at Preparatory Action in Security Research. T-SOFT is eager to cooperate with foreign partners in the area of security, knowledge management, GIS, telecommunication and interoperability.

Jaroslav PejcochJaroslav Pejcoch (53) is the T-SOFT director and co-founder, the founding member of the Czech branch office of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and a member of the board of directors of this branch office, a member of the Czech National Committee of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and a member of the presidium of The Czech Association of the Crisis Managers. He is an author of a wide scope of publications focusing on computer graphics, PC user interface, information logistics, systems for population and environment protection, system interoperability, risk management and critical infrastructure protection.

Contact
Ms Michaela Havlova
Tel. +420 261 348 738
E-mail: tsoft@tsoft.cz
www.tsoft.cz

Danubia NanoTech: The story of a start-up in nanotechnologies

Published
by
Ivan Filus
  on  March 7, 2005
  in  Case studies
. 0 Comments

Five Slovak and one Austrian researcher have started their business in the emerging area of nanotechnologies by establishing a company - Danubia NanoTech - in Bratislava. They had a brave vision and experience but what they lacked was money.

A startup headquartered in Bratislava, Danubia NanoTech combines a highly qualified team with wide ranging experience in nanoscale physics, along with close connections to some of the best centers of research and development in Europe, all of it in a low-cost but well endowed environment.

The company focuses its activities on production of carbon nanotubes by arc - discharge and laser ablation methods. As prepared, carbon nanotubes are purified using centrifugation. Final material is characterized by Raman spectroscopy and optical spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity. The pure and well characterized material is mixed with various polymers to obtain composites with high electrical and thermal conductivity and mechanical performance. The company can produce conductive transparent networks of nanotube with great potential applications (sensors, field-effect transistors).

The founders of Danubia NanoTech are physicists with considerable experience in nano-science and nanotechnology. They are co-authors of about 500 publications in the field of Carbon Nanotube research, and two of them share an ownership of five patents. The members of the group have been active at well-established institutions such as the Max Planck Institute of Solid State Research, Stuttgart (Germany), the University of Vienna (Austria), the Wake Forest University (USA), the Weizmann Institute (Israel) and others.

They have been seeking an investor since the company was established in the summer of 2004. Last year they entered into the Technology Incubator of the Slovak University of Technology (see the article at noweurope.com), which helped the company to start a negotiation with the investment fund.

The company was an expert leader in two proposals for the FP6 (area NMP) and asked for a support from the loan schemes. The main obstacle in this scheme was the short history of the company and lack of references.

The company seeks for an investment of 150.000 EUR for building the carbon nanotube laboratory as a prerequisite for the further development of the company. According to the business plan, Danubia NanoTech will focus on two main areas: production of nanotubes for clients from industry or research laboratories and development of new products based on the carbon nanotubes

Meet ITDH

Published
by
Steven Carlson
  on  January 27, 2005
  in  Case studies and Current events
. 0 Comments

I recently attended a press event at International Trade and Development Hungary (ITDH), held under the auspices of the Hungarian International Press Association (HIPA), where I took part in a roundtable Q&A with ITDH boss, Adam Tertak. I was particularly keen to hear his views on Hungary’s high tech sector, and roles of small startup companies and SMEs.

ITDH’s mission is to aid the inflow of foreign investment in Hungary, especially by assisting investors. In the early days of Hungary’s privatization, explained Tertak, who recently left Ernst & Young to ITDH, the organization didn’t have to do all too much. During the 1990’s Hungary received the majority of all foreign investment in Central Europe.

Continue reading ‘Meet ITDH’

IDS Scheer CR: 5 years of experience with EU projects

Published
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Vlastimil Vesely
  on  January 9, 2005
  in  Case studies
. 0 Comments

The very beginnings of the IDS Scheer mark stretch back to 1984, when Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer with his colleagues from Saarland University founded a small consulting company focused on process engineering. Today it is an international company with shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a significant global partner of SAP serving circa 4,000 customers in more than 50 countries around the world.

The Czech branch office has been on the local market since 1994 (originally in partnership with COMSOFT); the complete ownership integration into the parent company was carried out in 2003. IDS Scheer ?R, s.r.o. has the ISO certification for strategic consulting for business processes and support information system solution. A significant part of the product portfolio is represented also by consulting services of SAP system, the leading system of its category on the Czech market, using the company’s own ARIS Value Engineering methodology.

The first experience with the EU projects date back to 2000-2001, when Milena Hrbá?ková was charged with management of the Software Development Department and Translation Department and she decided to take advantage of synergy from knowledge of both and accepted an offer of one of the IDS partners to participate in the first project proposal (Dromeas, see below) in order to spread activities to Europe and gain international experience.

From the beginning the company was surprised by the general settings and rather free division of workload among consortium partners than is usual in commercial projects. “However, after experience with four EU projects our viewpoint is different”, states Milena Hrbá?ková. “It would be hardly possible to specify the research plan for circa three years ahead in more details. Another great experience was work in the multicultural environment of international consortium, where various cultural influences reflected in various methods of work and communication between partners. A very positive finding was that the verbal agreements were valid”. Despite that she advises the Czech participants to specify clearly in the consortium agreement the areas of decision-making, responsibilities, project costs, as well as rights for the access to and dissemination of project results.

According to Milena Hrbá?ková the company’s benefits of the participation in projects definitely include besides the actual projects outputs building “European know-how”, gaining international contacts and information regarding European markets including the possibility to compare the level of professional knowledge with CR. Although the framework programme projects do not always lead to a development of a commercial product ready to be put on the market (the output is usually a prototype), the company constantly gains and develops professional knowledge on the level of latest technologies, which can be exerted in other projects or commercial orders – which are gained thanks to positive references of participation in the project.

IST Projects

All projects mentioned below are of the STREP type (Specific Targeted Research Project) submitted to the IST (Information Society Technologies) part of the EU 5th Framework Programme, the first two in the Health - Intelligent environment for citizen centred health management category. The stated budgets are contributed by the EU by circa a half.

The first experience with the EU research projects was DROMEAS, which objective was the monitoring of the health state and performance of a sportsman during training, especially in the rehabilitation process after a trauma. The solution is applied by the Israeli-British chain of hospitals. The budget reached 4.2 mil. EUR for 2.5 years for 10 partners from 7 countries.

Soon after DROMEAS another project was approved with participation of IDS Scheer CR - HEALTHY MARKET. It involved a web application for design of personalized nutrition plans supporting healthy diet and civilization disease prevention as obesity, atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases. Pilot projects were rolled out in Italy and Estonia. The budget reached 4.3 mil. EUR for 2.5 years or 12 partners from 7 countries.

After experience in two projects the Milena Hrbá?ková team decided for a challenge to undertake the demanding role of coordinator in the DICTATE project, submitted to the category Systems for health professionals: creating a Health knowledge info-structure starting in summer 2002. The budget reached 3.5 mil. EUR for 4 years for 6 partners. The objective was to develop a system intermediating a voice input of medical data with the help of a pocket computer, its transformation to a standard format and unambiguous interpretation to the health record of a patient.

Last year another project proposal was approved with the participation of IDS Scheer in the 6th Framework Programme, with the objective to design a system for planning surgical interventions based on the 3D model of a heart and the entire cardiovascular system of a patient for a realistic simulation. IDS as a technical partner is responsible for the functional system specification of the CARTIDIS project.

For those interested to participate in EU projects

The active participation of staff in the international R&D projects requires, according to Milena Hrbá?ková, a combination of different skills, knowledge, abilities and approaches starting with a wide overview in technologies related to the project, and openness to new solutions and team-work through a quick orientation in the imperfectly defined problem and an ability to think and formulate on various levels of abstraction as far as the active foreign language skill (especially English) and orientation in the terminology of EU projects.

It is necessary to actively follow the development of the entire project, that means frequent communication (e-mails, phone-calls, videoconferences) and frequent travelling to the management and technical meetings. Projects also require considerable financial and legal administration, often with a need of support from other parties, which have a sufficient language skill and orientation in a given issue (e.g. audit and legal services).

The essential set of skills and knowledge is usually necessary to build from more people, sometimes it is needed to find the external sources. “This means that smaller companies are handicapped for participation in projects, as it is usually harder for them to create such a work-team, respectively to allocate its work capacity only for this type of project. The tried-and-true method is to gain from the beginning experience in project as a partner only, focused only on a particular part of a project (workpackage). In further projects the company can go for a more challenging role as a “workpackage leader”, project coordinator or to try to write and submit a project on their own”“, advises Milena Hrbá?ková.

Cooperation offer

IDS Scheer CR has besides the IST projects from the Framework Programmes experience with project proposals for eTEN, eContent, CRAFT, FET Open, Interreg and Innovation programmes. The company would like to exploit its knowledge and experience gained during the involvement in the international consortiums especially as a technology partner in the area of definition of functional specifications, security, during web portal and database design and would like to reflect it in future cooperation with other international as well as local partners.

Contact
Milena Hrbá?ková
Tel. +420 543 524 630
E-mail: m.hrbackova@ids-scheer.cz
www.ids-scheer.cz

Milena Hrbá?ková is a graduate of the Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, in 2003 she received an MSc degree at the Brno International Business School. Previously she had been employed at the Brno University of Technology, Department of Computer Science and in PC-DIR as Head of the SAP R/3 Support Department. For some time she has been self-employed as an independent consultant, lecturer and translator in the field of IT. Since 1997 she has been working in IDS Scheer CR, where she was the Head of the Translation Department and later Head of the Programming Department. Since 2001 she has been responsible for European Commission projects management within the company.

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