Some changes at the R&D department of ASTRON

© R&D

Last year, the R&D MT and some scientific members analysed the functioning of the R&D department. Several areas in the department were identified that could be improved in order to reach the long-term goals of the R&D department in a better way. After a careful process of discussing several solutions within the R&D MT, the ASTRON MT and with a positive advice of the Workers' Council the following changes will be effective from January 1st, 2018:

- The current competence group Systems Design and Integration (SD&I) will be transformed into a new Competence Group 'Systems Engineering & Project Management' (SE&PM).

- The Technology Transfer Office will be moved from the R&D department to ASTRON staff level and will be combined with the other business development activities of ASTRON.

- The R&D secretariat will be organized as a Competence Group with its own line manager.

- The scientific staff will be integrated in the competence groups.

- Some areas and processes will be organized department wide (like acquisition of projects, architecture, and research) involving people from all competence groups.

As a result of the aforementioned and also related to the optimization of the matching of expertise within the groups, a number of R&D employees will be reallocated to a new or another Competence Group.

The coming weeks/months this new overall R&D structure will be implemented.

We are aware that these changes will take time and effort of not only the colleagues who will move to another group but of all the R&D employees.

Based on the positive reactions we are confident that we can do this together!