LIRA Program
Evaluation Criteria
Graduates
(Academic Research projects)
INTRODUCTION
The Ministry of Industry, the Association of Lebanese Industrialists, and the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research are proud to launch the annual Conference and Exhibition of Lebanese Industrial Research Achievements.
All universities and research entities are encouraged to participate in this "innovation showcase" aiming at transforming high quality, creative industrial research into productive industrial investment opportunities. The Graduate category is open to participation for any academic research entity (graduate students, university professors, researchers at research centres, etc…).
The participating projects shall compete through an open forum to be evaluated by specialized jury committees based on the enclosed criteria, during the LIRA Exhibition. Cash prizes of $1000 in addition to trophies with certificates from LIRA Advisory Board are awarded to the best project.
This graduate category is basically meant to encourage applied research at universities, oriented towards innovation in the industrial sector.
PROJECT ASSESMENT CRITERIA
The main criterion is to have an academically successful research, as per usual academic criteria of publication in well known peer reviewed international Journals.
To be accepted for the competition, the researcher must express clearly the potential benefit of the research to the Lebanese industrial sector, without necessarily having completed an operational prototype. The research project must have one of the following potential outputs:
1 A new product that can be economically produced in Lebanon.
2 A new industrial process that can be applied in an industry in Lebanon.
3. A new proposal that can enhance the productivity of an existing industry ( e.g. through new software or automation procedure)
4. Other innovative ideas would be considered as well.
In this category, it is expected that a successful research may need further R&D effort to elaborate the applied side. It is also expected the "Researcher (s)" would be willing to carry out needed steps, alone or within a team to come up with "an operational prototype" if enough financing is made available.
Submitted Document should include evaluation of well known referees in the domain of concerned subject.
In this category, submitted research project would be considered on a case by case basis referring each case to a well qualified Jury that would include a technically qualified person – peer reviewer – along with industrialists, investors and possibly economists.
Among the criteria – defined above – to be applied to this category would be:
A. Innovation
B. Quality and design
C. Potential application in the Lebanese industry
A. Innovation:
A-1. Creativity:
There is a strong need in Lebanon to promote the development of new industrial activities. Lebanon, a nation that imports about 1000% more than it exports, needs to start producing new high-tech oriented products which can be economically viable in a nation with a small local market devoid of natural resources and at regional levels. The inclusion of this element is to encourage directing our skilled human resources toward products that have not yet been produced in Lebanon or in export markets.
The developer(s) is to identify clearly all innovations introduced, as compared to similar products in the market or to other similar projects. Accordingly, a grade from 0 to 20 is attributed to the project.
A-2. Multi-disciplinary Content:
In Today's market, high degree of competitiveness can only be achieved by a successful integration of multiple specializations, in the production of higher complexity products, having higher value added. Hence the emphasis in ABET Criteria 2000 of the need to train engineers on functioning as members of multidisciplinary groups. In industry, it is realized that competitiveness can only be achieved by the successful integration of various disciplines. To date, the projects presented have generally consisted of single-discipline groups. Clearly, there is a strong need to reverse this trend and encourage applicants and the academia to develop multi-disciplinary teams and activities. Thus, the inclusion of this parameter is believed to promote multi-disciplinary thinking in academia and among engineers. Starting from a grade of 2, 2 marks will be added for each new discipline integrated up to a maximum of 10.
B. Quality and Design:
B-1. Design of manufacturing processes:
Many of the excellent "lab prototypes" never make it to the manufacturing stage because the developer(s) did not put the extra needed effort to design all the necessary details of manufacturing processes. In fact, many good designs can not be easily manufactured and may have to be radically modified to accommodate the needs of mass production processes and/or to reduce the cost of such processes and, to improve the competitiveness of the product.
Developer(s) is expected to prepare a serious documentation on the design of various steps envisaged to move the prototype from the lab to the manufacturing workshops.
An assessment of the manufacturing costs must be included as well. This design will be evaluated leading to a grade between 0 and 20.
B-2. Quality:
In today's market there is no room for products that are sub-par in terms of quality. It is thus imperative to include this parameter in any product evaluation. It has long been established that Quality is mostly a management system. But whereas systems can be evaluated with respect to quality management standards, such as ISO 9001/2000, it would be difficult to subject operating prototypes, or single product / projects to such an evaluation. Instead, it is proposed three or more quantified criteria that carry a qualitative assessment of the eventual production system, and that of the finished product. Three parameters are proposed: robustness, simplicity, and durability. Noting that it may be difficult to apply all three to some of the entries in the LIRA exhibition, additional criteria for specific products may be used in order to establish a comparative measure of quality. A grade from 0 to 10 will be given as a result of the quality assessment. The results of the exhibition evaluations are generally used to reformulate and reassess the quality criteria.
C. Potential application in the Lebanese Industry
C-1. Value Added [Productivity]:
The need to include this parameter may be best reflected by quoting Michael Porter "Productivity, not exports or natural resources, determines the prosperity of any state or nation".
Productivity is best measured by the ratio of the added value to the input factors invested in producing it. The grading of this index is based on a round number approximating typical rates of productivity in industrialized nations.
The developer(s) must show serious effort in estimating the value-added of his/her product, by calculating the expenses incurred and proposing a "tag price" for the finished product.
The academic need to include this factor resides in the necessity of creating a strong awareness among applying developers and among industrial companies of the need to measure and continuously work on improving this critical survival factor.
A grade from 0 to 10 will be attributed to the project depending on the added value shown.
C-2. Industrial / Investor Consumer Evaluation:
(End user acceptability)
To reflect the need for interaction with local industrialists/potential investors, and to widen the scope of evaluation, it is proposed that industrialists visiting the exhibition be polled, and that their opinions be given weight in the overall evaluation through this index. An industrialist is a past, current, and future investor and this evaluation criterion would act as proof test and user acceptability of the project. Based on the evaluation results, a grade from 0 to 10 will be given to each project.
C-3. Business Plan:
Universities are vital to Lebanon's economic competitiveness because, in addition to "providing students with core skills that can compete with the best" workers and employees, they should "promote a greater understanding of entrepreneurship and the self confidence to take risk". This will lead to a culture of entrepreneurship, and to new business ideas and business start-ups. These university "spin-outs" are vital for employment-generation for increased opportunities, and for a competitive economy. Therefore, it is essential for end-of-year projects, to demonstrate commercial viability, best exemplified professionally through a business plan. A grade from 0 to 10 will be given to each project depending on the business plan submitted.
C-4. Marketability and Exportability:
It is essential that available resources be directed towards economically viable and commercial acceptable activities and not towards absurdity. It is thus imperative to be aware of the global market, and to put emphasis on those products that can be economically viable and marketable, given Lebanese economic constraints, namely products in which Lebanese producers may have a competitive advantage. The global market reality is a fact that both our graduates and local industrialists need to be aware of. As was mentioned earlier, there is no room for products whose quality is sub par.
Thus the main factors in product marketability today are: quality, price and acceptability by end user. As such, cost as a percentage of global prices for equivalent products, is believed to be a good indicator of marketability.
Developer(s) is expected to prove the marketability by searching the prices of comparable products in the market; he/she is expected also to have some estimate of acceptability by end user.
A grade from 0 to 10 will be given by the committee after studying the Marketability study presented.