Dutch only

Stay tuned to watch Kanaal Z: Innovatiekanaal is in the programme loop starting at 20h on Wednesday December 7th. Kanaal Z is a Dutch television channel in Belgium.

We have encountered this situation, and we grew tired of it. So, we developed a solution. Today, after elaborate testing on our own set-ups, we are ready to share it with the world. And when we say testing, we do mean testing. We stacked eight of these front-ends, and used them during a three month long experiment on an agricultural machinery. Vibration, dust, high temperatures (up to 50 degrees Celsius external temperature), our set-up has it all. At the end of those three months our front-end delivered perfect data just as at the start.

Specifications:

• shielded body and shielded connectors
• three power supplies available, independently selectable per input
• compatible with most National Instruments PCI and PXI Data Acquisition cards
• pull-up and pull-down selectable per channel
• conversion from current to voltage per channel
• one or two measurements per connector
• easily stackable for large set-ups
• easy connection of the NI cable, power supply and 8 digital IO on the back

The front-end on the picture supports up to 16 signal connectors, but we also offer a variant with only 8 connections, ideal for differential measurements. If required, connection cables can be contained. We can even provide entire measurement set-ups, including software. Contact us for your measurement challenge!

We will shortly launch alternative versions with other connection options. Please contact us if you have specific questions or requests. You can also visit us at our booth at NIDays on September 27th.

At our new location we will have more room to build our set-ups. Besides our offices we also have a construction hall. Our new address is Romeinsestraat 18, 3001 Leuven-Heverlee.

As an Alliance member, INDUCT has a booth at NIDays. This year INDUCT will also present its first product at NIDays. Stay tuned!

“We are committed to innovation but we don’t know where to start” It is true that it is difficult to initiate a culture of innovation, but there is a lot of help available. In Flanders there are several government initiatives such as the “Innovatiecentrum” to get you started, and there are specialized companies such as INDUCT to help you determine how you can become an innovative market leader. You would be surprised how much easier it is to determine your innovation road map with an external consultant at the table, who is not influenced by the way of thinking in the company.

“It is so expensive to invest in R&D and to innovate, especially in times of recession.” This statement contains the most common misconception: innovation costs money, preferably lots of it. This is not true. After all, nobody said you have to do it on your own! In a framework of Open Innovation the risks (i.e. costs) and benefits can be shared between several partners. Moreover, in Flanders the cost of innovation can further be reduced by making use of innovation subsidies. In conclusion, cost is a really bad reason not to innovate.

“We want to take our product to the next level, but we miss the needed expertise and resources. Moreover, we can’t hire new staff since there is a global freeze on hiring” Again, there is no need to do everything yourself. Focus on your own talents! If you need new expertise for a new product feature, it is often more interesting to use a partner than to build up the knowledge yourself. External help has quite some advantages:

• faster time-to-market: we all do business to make money, and the faster you are on the market, the more money you make. Why waste time to learn everything yourself? For the intellectual challenge?
• risk sharing opportunity: some engineering companies are willing to take responsibility for part of the execution risk. This way you can reduce the potential downside of your product development
• out-of-the-box: an external expert is much better at thinking our-of-the-box than your own personnel, he is not conditioned by the company culture and habits.

After this response, we often get the following objection: “We do not want to depend on external partners for our product development.” This is indeed a genuine concern, but is motivated from the classic “Closed Innovation” viewpoint. In Open Innovation, your suppliers are your partners. It is no longer your product, but it is the product of your partnership. Your supplier/partner is thus just as motivated as you are to maintain and improve the product.

Open Innovation may look somewhat frightening at first, but the benefits easily outweigh the risks. Give it a try, and you will be surprised of the results.

Open Innovation means that multiple parties combine their expertise and resources to execute an innovation project. The parties involved can come from different sectors facing similar problems, or it can be a product company that combines forces with key suppliers. In this last case, the suppliers become partners in a joint product development. They do not only share the risks, but they also share the benefits of the new project.

The power of Open Innovation lies in the fact that every party focuses on what he or she does best. This increases the efficiency of the project. Moreover, the set of fresh eyes often gives rise to new insights. Risk sharing is also an important benefit of the Open Innovation paradigm.

Innovation projects are time-consuming, and thus expensive. At INDUCT we often lower the project price to reduce the cash-cost for our customers, in exchange for which the customer pays a success fee at the end of the project, or shares the intellectual property with INDUCT. This approach also assures the customer that we are 100% committed to make the project a success.

Are you wondering how we could unleash innovation on your company? Contact us today, and find out!

The entire article (in Dutch only) can be found here.

Flanders’ DRIVE is the Flemish partner of choice for innovation and development in the automotive industry. Their high-tech infrastructure in Lommel brings companies, researchers and experts together to develop innovative products and processes. Their research projects focus on light, green and safe vehicles and effective production processes.

INDUCT decided to join Flanders’ DRIVE because of their active research in amongst others autonomous and hybrid vehicles. By joining organizations such as Flanders’ DRIVE and FMTC, we can guarantee our customers that we are up to date with the latest evolutions in the sector.

FMTC was founded by AGORIA, the Belgian technology industry federation, and leading mechatronic companies in Flanders.

INDUCT applied for membership of FMTC to collaborate with other FMTC members in the design of the machines of the future. Moreover, the joint research projects of FMTC are a nice illustration of the open innovation framework in which INDUCT likes to operate. Every member company brings its specific expertise to the table, and together we come to new solutions.

Times are changing however. Driven by cost and time to market, more and more companies – large and small – apply an open innovation strategy. Some companies join forces with other companies (often active in a completely different market) to exploit synergies in their research road map. Others search for complimentary expertise to help them bring their product to the market.

An important plus of open innovation is risk sharing. The costs of the development are spread over multiple parties. The benefits are of course divided as well.

At INDUCT, most of our projects are executed in the context of open innovation, for internal as well as external projects. For external projects there are two distinct situations, joint research and pure contract research. Let’s illustrate that with some examples. In collaboration with CNH we have a joint research project. CNH wants to develop a new generation large square baler, and we at INDUCT want to develop new robust control methodologies. These control techniques are essential for the realization of the objective on the large square baler. Since this development is interesting for our own road map, we invest in this project ourselves, which leads to a win-win. Both our own research as that of CNH becomes cheaper. Moreover we learn from each other which leads to a better end result.

Also in pure contract research we apply the principles of open innovation. For small companies product innovations can be very expensive. Often they do not have the necessary resources or expertise in house, and they have to work with external consultants, which leads to even higher costs. Innovation projects are also risky. Nobody can guarantee that a solution can be found that can be sold for an acceptable price. INDUCT is however willing to share that risk with its customers. In practice this means that we make a large part of our fee dependent on the result. This can be a pure success fee – an amount is paid upon success of the project, or a royalty per product during a period of time. This reduces the immediate cost, and the potential loss if it does not work out for our customer. From our side, it is an investment in our own expertise, and it helps to create long term partnerships with our customers.

Of course we also apply open innovation in our internal product development projects. If we have a good idea for a new product, we look for a suitable partner that has knowledge of the market, can take care of sales & marketing and in some cases also produces the final product. This allows us to focus on what we are best at: technological innovation. By outsourcing sales and production we can also shorten our time to market. This approach also allows us to be active in more than one sector, which would be considerably harder if we had to build our own sales organization.

The development phase of the product can be cheaper, because we invest part of our fee directly in the development of your product. This reduces the risk for the customer, and guarantees that we will do whatever it takes to make the product a success. After the project our customer can continue to count on our support. In the open innovation framework, customers become partners.