Corporate Governance: The Evaluation Based Approach to the Governance and Business Models of the EPIC Centre of Excellence in Production Informatics and Control (EPIC Coe)

• Published in: European Conference on Management, Leadership & Governance pp. 161 - 170
• Main Authors: Monostori, László, Kádár, Botond, Nick, Gábor, Pfeiffer, András, Várgedő, Tamás, Hecklau, Fabian
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Kidmore End Academic Conferences International Limited 01.10.2018
• Subjects: Business models; Collaboration; Communication; Computer science; Concrete; Consortia; Cooperation; Corporate governance; Education; Engineering; Industry 4.0; Informatics; Innovations; Interdisciplinary aspects; Manufacturing; Strategic planning; Technology transfer; Austria; Belgium; United States > US
• ISSN: 2048-9021; 2048-903X

The Centre of Excellence in Production Informatics and Control (EPIC CoE) was established by an international consortium with the objective to be a leading, internationally acknowledged and sustainable focus point in its field, representing excellence in R&D&I related to Cyber-Physical Production. This 7-year project is funded by the European Horizon 2020 Teaming Programme. By the end of this period, the newly created EPIC CoE is expected to become fully selfsustainable in its regional operation that is planned to cover both advanced and emerging countries in Europe. Main objective of this paper is to describe the organisational development and transformation process of an Industry 4.0 oriented state-of-the-art organisation. These circumstances determine the approach how to address the issue of governance closely related to the business model and processes that will be implemented. However, this task has to be facilitated as part of the evolution process envisaged for the upcoming years. First the vision, mission and concrete targets of the EPIC CoE are analysed to build the strategic basis for the derivation of the management and organisational structures enabling the participating partners to harmonise their experiences, skills and competences. By these efforts, the EPIC CoE is conceived as a synergic combination of two entities, i.e. one existing, acting in basic and applied research while the other one is a new company focussing on knowledge transfer and dissemination. In this paper, the special aspects that led to the concrete representations of the governance structure for each of the planned three operational phases will be outlined. These phases are (1) the establishment and start-up of the EPIC CoE, (2) followed by the phase of the evolving and maturing operation (3) to be concluded by the self-sustained one. For the definition of these phases, it is indispensable to define the different levels of the management functions and responsibilities to ensure efficiency, reliability, transparency, clear accountability as well as high-quality services to EPIC CoE's clients and partners. Being service oriented is specifically a key issue, therefore the processes that will be highlighted are grouped into: the core processes embodying the daily businesses, the management processes that ensure the effective flow of all processes that are aided by the supporting processes.