Research and Development Approaches and İmplementation Issues in Agricultural Machinery Sector; Konya Case

Abstract

In Turkey, agricultural manufacturing plays a big role in industry as a sector and can produce almost all categories of agricultural equipment. When considered agricultural machinery sector, it is ranked as the 5th biggest machinery sector in Turkey, covering 7% of the total exports and in domestic market, agricultural machinery sector is ranked as 4th sector. From a regional point of view, it can be stated that İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Konya, AydIn, Manisa and BalIkesir regions are prominent in the sector in terms of both manufacturing volume and number of employments. However, when it comes to contribute and implement new technological developments, Turkey cannot perform adequately considering export-import balance. Most of the imports are especially the equipment possessing high technology. The lack of following trend technologies becomes a potential threat on the sector. A demand analysis questionnaire was conducted to understand the demands of SME's in agricultural machinery sector, which is the target group of 'Smart Technologies, Development, Design and Prototyping Center' that is planned to establish within our university. In this study, results of the survey that was implemented to capture current state of the overall approach to R&D applications and demand analysis in agricultural machinery sector in Konya, Turkey. In addition to the current picture, main impediments in process of technological transformation are confirmed by the results of demand analysis survey for the region. The demand analysis clearly revealed that almost 60% of the companies participating in the survey believe that there are problems in the current state of the sector; whereas another additional 10% considers the future of the sector being in jeopardy. Main problems are defined as Lack of skilled labour, Insufficient R&D activities by considering low awareness of R&D and SMEs' inability to develop and conduct R&D projects and Lack of effective University-Industry Collaboration. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.