Machine tool makers fight for R&D funding

Date: 04/01/1996

By Tim Jones

THE European Commission's single-minded approach to funding development of the new generation car, train and aeroplane has fuelled fears that innovation by machine tool makers could be undermined.

As Research Commissioner Edith Cresson bids to divert a 700-million-ecu financing reserve largely into these key areas, the European Committee for the Cooperation of the Machine Tool Industry (CECIMO) is sounding a warning.

“You get the feeling these sectors are trying to guide all the research into their own profit with the risk that other sectors, including the machine tool and manufacturing technology sectors, could suffer,” says CECIMO Secretary-General Jean Heymans.

The source of his concern is the task forces created by the Commission to look into the car, train and aircraft of tomorrow, vaccines against viral disease, educational multimedia software and linkages between different types of transport.

While the Fourth Framework Programme for research has a five-year budget of 13.16 billion ecu, Cresson is seeking to unlock an extra 700-million-ecu reserve before it becomes void at the end of June, and wants to target the transport and software projects for financing.

CECIMO agrees with the targeting of these highly-competitive areas, but is concerned that funds should not be diverted. “This is fine,” says Heymans, “but you cannot make an aircraft or a car without a machine tool. The companies developing these products are our clients and they will come to us for supplies, so we must develop our research in parallel.”

The lobby is suspicious that the Commission's focus on the task forces is already affecting funding decisions.

“We are afraid that the acceptance of proposals will depend on the policy determined by the task forces,” says Heymans.

For example, the call for bids for funding under the 1.8-billion-ecu Basic Research for Industrial Technology in Europe (BRITE) and the European Research Programme for Advanced Materials (EURAM) programmes, due to be issued at the end of last year, has now been postponed until the end of March.

“The Commission says it is not because of the task forces. That is what they claim,” says Heymans. “We are a little suspicious. Why was it suddenly postponed?”

At the moment, around 20 projects under BRITE-EURAM are dedicated to developing machine tools, robots and manufacturing electronics. An ESPRIT project is looking into open numerical control systems or computers that run machine tools and textile machines.

The main aim of CECIMO will be to win a special task force for manufacturing technologies under the Fifth Framework Programme from 2000. But it warns: “That doesn't mean we will be silent in the meantime.”

The seeds of a task force will be created soon under BRITE-EURAM with a 250,000-ecu budget, which will assess all the R&D projects up and running at national, European and international levels.

This will seek out the gaps in research and future needs of the industry, as well as studying how customers of capital goods companies are developing. “We have the embryo of a task force, but we don't have a third of the 700 million ecu,” says Heymans.

“Targeting is a good thing but we want it broadened to everything that has to do with manufacturing technology, that is robots and other types of machinery,” he says. “Only that way will we see how far technology could help in developing new means of transportation.”