It all started in 2012 from a conversation between Rafał Sornek – at that time the head of R&D at Hiab (one of its branches operates in Stargard) and Jaśmina Solecka (whose firm Jasmin Research brings business and education together) about a hypothetical relationship between a Finnish company and higher education institutions.

 

“We have an idea, we though, so let’s see what the universities think about it. The idea appealed to prof. Mirosław Pajor and his group of researchers from the West-Pomeranian Technological University in Szczecin. Krzysztof Pietrusewicz, PhD from the Electrical Department was particularly enthusiastic and became our friendly ghost”, recalls Rafał Sornek.

 

The researchers and entrepreneurs filed the relevant application and obtained funding of EUR 500,000. The project was implemented as part of the Industry Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP) – an initiative under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions research programme which brings research and business together.

 

“The initiative aimed to increase the capacity of load-handling equipment and we wanted to achieve our goal through exchange of knowledge.  We let the researchers work in three branches of Hiab, whereas the company’s R&B employees were given the opportunity to work at the West-Pomeranian Technological University in Szczecin and Silesian Technical University. “The group of participants in the three-year project was comprised of several people from Poland, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and Bulgaria”, enumerates Krzysztof Pietrusewicz and admits that the project was one of the University’s first initiatives: “At first we weren’t quite sure what procedures needed to be developed; we had to learn for example how to recruit employees using EU funds. In this respect we were the pioneers at our University.

 

“iLoad was also the first project fully funded by the EU in Cargotec’s history.   And we are talking about a company with an annual revenue of EUR 3.5 bn., so we were the ones to pave the way for the initiative within our company”, says Rafał Sornek.

 

Successful project

 

Hiab’s R&D employees from Sweden, the Netherlands and Poland visited the West-Pomeranian Technological University in Szczecin and the Silesian Technical University on several occasions.  They learned how and where to look for theoretical knowledge at the universities and had the opportunity to take part in a lot of training courses.  They also got to know the software and equipment used by the universities that is not available in their company.

 

Polish researchers during their visits abroad could familiarise themselves with the structure and working methods of a business with a global reach. They took part in implementation of new solutions – from the conception to the final offering.

“I lived in Sweden for almost two years. A colleague from the Silesian Technical University went to the Netherlands and then to Scandinavia. Our Swedish, Dutch and Bulgarian colleagues moved to Szczecin for some time. For all of us it was a period of hard work and study as well as work with representatives of other cultures”, recalls Krzysztof Pietrusewicz.

 

“Representatives of the world of research contributed a lot of precious knowledge to our work together. They showed us how things that had taken us years to complete could be done in a span of a few months. As a result of iLoad, we launched our own projects regarding new product implementation in the middle of the year. In April, at the Bauma Fair in Munich, we will present equipment with a new generation of control systems manufactured in Stargard and marketed under the Hiab brand. While developing them we used the results of work done in the iLoad project”, says Rafał Sornek.

 

The project also had an unexpected influence on the professional careers of some of the participants. One of the employees of Hiab Stargard is doing a PhD on iLoad and a researcher from Bulgaria and iLoad participant is working as an engineer in Hiab in Stargard.

 

“Another legacy from the iLoad project are the internships that students from the Electrical Department of the West-Pomeranian Technological University have been offered at Hiab in Stargard. As a consequence, the company now has a new source of well-educated employees while for the Electrical Department it is comforting to know that its graduates in engineering are being shaped with their future employers’ needs in mind”, says Krzysztof Pietrusewicz.

 

It is only the beginning

 

Rafał Sornek is convinced the project has helped improve the image of the West Pomeranian Province among large enterprises: “When Cargotes decided to situate its plant in Stargard, it did so mainly to reduce manufacturing costs. Today Hiab Stargard is the company’s second-largest R&D centre in the world after Sweden. It is bigger than the R&D centres in Finland, Ireland, Spain, Korea and China.

 

The iLoad programme came to an end on 31 December 2015, but the participants are confident that it will give rise to more European projects equally bringing business and research together on a human level.

 

SG