What is the ARC (Advanced Research Center)

The ARC stands for - Advanced Research Center.

To start with, the ARC is a new entity in the EC.

The function of the ARC is “Applied Research”.  It is not product development, it is not commercial projects, but applied research.  So, it is an Applied Research Institute.

To have a “Research Institute” in the EC is a big thing.  This by itself is a qualitative novelty.

The ARC must, above all, serve the EC companies.  And the EC companies must learn how to use the ARC.

The idea of the ARC is for companies to delegate some of their research (fully or partially, present or future) to the ARC.

It is about off-loading some of future product research to the ARC.  As such, it must enable new directions in the companies, new application spaces, new product lines, …

The below slide shows the idea of splitting the research (R) part of R&D and delegating it to the ARC.

So, in this sense, the ARC can be viewed as an extension to the EC companies.

The flow could be shown as in the below picture.  The companies formulate their research projects and pass them to the ARC, the ARC conducts the research and passes the results of the research back to the companies.

The outcome of the ARC could be POCs, technologies, IPs, new concepts, …

The following type of research could be envisioned:

·       Short-term Research: this is research done for a current project or for the assessment of a potential project.

·       Mid-term Research: this is research done for the next project or the next product.

·       Long-term Research:  This is usually defined by the CTO of the company.  CTOs are the individuals who look at technology trends and seek to incorporate them into their products and solutions.  

As such, the ARC should be involved in future-looking activities of the companies.

This will save time and resources, the companies will gain new knowledge, new application spaces will open, and the companies will propel themselves into the future.

Any part of the research phase could be possibly given to the ARC.

From the S-curve evolution point of view, we could show the below picture.

The companies will have to learn how to use the ARC.  It may not come natural in the beginning as both research and development are currently done within the same company.  But like anything else, we will have to learn how to do it.    Any delegation does not come naturally in the beginning, but then we learn.  But the benefits in time reduction, in getting into new products and application spaces, and in positioning for the future must be understood as a competitive advantage.  And like anything else, it is the company leaders that must take a lead in this endeavor.

Currently, there are five labs in the ARC:

1.     Automotive Research Lab

2.     Aerospace Research Lab

3.     Semiconductor Research Lab

4.     Smart Manufacturing Research Lab

5.     Cybersecurity & Computation Lab

Each lab will be equipped with necessary equipment.

Each lab will have a Lead Researcher who will be responsible of coordinating the lab and the research activities, including working with the research teams to implement and deliver the projects.  The Lead Research positions are open at this point.

The structure of the ARC will have the following shape. 

The Training Coordinator will be responsible for coordinating the training programs within the projects, coordinate the development of curricula, and engage in cooperation with US universities.

The ARC will provide research as a service (RaaS).  This service may be free or paid depending on the situation.

The Business Development Manager will be responsible for presenting the capacity and activities of the lab and bring in grants and contracts.

The research will be conducted by teams that will be put together for each research topic.  Size of the teams can vary from 3 to 15 people.  The team members could be students, scientists and professional engineers.  The team leads could be from the company delegating the research.

Individuals from these teams, then, could either join the companies that they did research for, or create new companies, or stay in the ARC as research staff.  As such, the research projects are also about preparing teams that, then, may move into other organizations.

This is the ARC at its first approximation.  With time it will evolve and may take different shapes.  But this is what it looks like in the beginning.  Each company that will engage the ARC will enrich it with a new aspect, a new dimension, a new shape.

With the ARC, we will have closed the loop on the whole engineering lifecycle from research and technology development to product development, to production, to delivering holly integrated solutions.

And from the Engineering City’s perspective, the “EC Consortium” will have established pretty much all the fundamental elements that it had envisioned in the beginning of the road.

And this is a competitive advantage!

The future must be bright!

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