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.