Industry-university co-operation in the product and process development: Experiences with Portuguese SMEs

The co-operation between the University and the Portuguese Industry is fragile, almost limited to big corporations, and largely subsidy-driven. This is a situation that does not favour SMEs, since currently they have not technical staff able to identify the opportunities in terms of co-operation, and to setup project proposals with a minimum probability of success. In the authors' opinion, however, another essential issue must be considered: the difficult interaction between those who uses a problem-solving reasoning and those who are acquainted to the scientific research methods. A possible approach to ease this question - which is not heavily dependent on external funding and on the associated bureaucracy - is the setting-up of small projects with SMEs that can be used as final projects for students. The present paper describes the authors' experience, as professors of Mechanical Engineering, in their collaborative work with several SMEs.