In spite of the vital function of R&D in the life of any enterprise, most manufacturers especially in private sectors of developing countries are reluctant to spare budget and time for such an issue. In these organizations, the day to day running of production plants and keeping up with sale contracts to OEMs takes a full scale of managerial occupations. Nevertheless, the major challenges against R&D establishment and progress are lack of capital investments and professional human resources as well as long duration of engineering projects. For most of these projects, even if substantial government loans become available, the rate of return hardly convinces the shareholders. In order to overcome the difficulties of a R&D foundation in this study, a partnership between a few manufacturers of related products and technology has been defined. Therefore, instead of several internal R&D departments at manufacturer sites, a single and stand alone but shared R&D centre is established. In the constitution, each of the partners contributes to a share proportional to its size and demand. A period is also agreed upon during which the joint-venture R&D will remain non-profitable. Required facilities for R&D centre can be provided by the clients who either lease them for a definite time or dedicate them to projects at their sites. It is evident by the outcomes of the case study that both the machineries and human resources borrowed from the clients either being a member or an external customer will accelerate the project. In about 18 projects being completed in less than 3 years, an average of 2 months time has been saved. The joint-venture R&D centre of this research has become financially independent just after 2 years .

Keywords