Collaboration between Service and R&D Organizations – Two Cases in Automation Industry

Industrial automation systems are long-lasting multitechnological systems that need industrial services in order to keep the system up-to-date and running smoothly. The Service organization needs to jointly work internally with R&D and externally with customers and COTS providers so as to operate efficiently. This paper focuses to Service – R&D collaboration. It presents a descriptive case study of how the working relationship between Service and R&D organizations has been established in a two example industrial service cases (upgrade and audit cases). The article reports the collaboration practices and tools that have been defined for these industrial services. This research provides, for other companies and research institutes that work with industrial companies, practical real-life cases of how Service and R&D organizations collaborate together. Other companies would benefit from studying the contents of the cases presented in this article and applying these practices in their particular context, where applicable.