Research and Development (R&D)

The Research and Development (R&D) department is a crucial component of a corporation’s organizational structure, as it plays a vital role in developing new products, processes, and technologies.

The R&D department of ERC is responsible for conducting research to identify new opportunities for innovation, as well as to understand the market, consumer needs, and industry trends. The research may be in the form of surveys, experiments, or focus groups. It also can be carried out on data analytics in all areas of railways, including structures, track, rolling stock, transport, sales and business activities, as well as on related core technologies.

ERC’s R&DD activities are focused on creative and systematic work undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge—including knowledge of people, culture, and society—and to devise new applications using available knowledge. We are aimed at new findings, based on original concepts (and their interpretation) or hypotheses.

Objectives

The primary objective of an R&D department is to conduct research that can lead to new innovations and ideas that will help the company remain competitiveness in its market. ERC’s R & D department have the following main objectives:

Productivity:

• The main objective is to improve product/service quality and efficiency.
• It tries to discover and develop new ways that are more effective and efficient than the existing.
• It also provides new ideas and techniques to the production team so that they can produce more effective and efficient services.

Development of new techniques:

• The creation of new techniques and technologies is one of the R&D department responsibilities. So, the service becomes more efficient and less time-consuming.

 Researching different areas

• It also conducts research in many areas related to ERC services, such as; how to make the service easier to provide, what resources should be used for efficient service, how to improve the quality of the Service, etc.

Conducting market research

• This is an important role carried out by the R&D department
• It conducts market research in order to study customer preferences, consumer behavior, competitors’ activities, etc.

Conducting market research

ü  This helps the company develop new services that will appeal to customers and achieve success in the market.

R & D importance

• R&D helps create a breakthrough in product/service quality, creating a competitive advantage that is hard to catch up by competitors.
• R&D helps to improve capacity, reduce costs
• R&D supports the implementation of Marketing research, providing extremely valuable information for Marketing through data analysis and processing.
• R&D contributes to shaping long-term marketing strategies and plans through forecasts of new products/services and technologies.

Functions of Research and Development

The R&D department’s responsibility is to drive change within ERC by conducting research, advising to develop new products/services, processes, and technologies, and improving existing products/services. The R&D department collaborates with other departments to ensure that products/service meet customer needs, are technically feasible, and are cost-effective, and protects the company’s intellectual property rights.

As ERC is the sole R&D organization of Ethiopia Railways and functions as the technical advisor and consultant to the government. Basically, its activities involve:

• Conduct research on new and improved ways of doing business.
• Conduct research on the gaps of doing business.
• Development of standards for materials and products especially needed by Ethiopian Railways.
• Facilitate knowledge & technology transfer bases.
• Develop and maintain a system for ERC’s Knowledge Management base.
• Researching on curriculum.
• Employ staff with a technical or scientific background.