Text and photo: Elin Svilaas
On June 7th the top management of Isdefe came to Kongsberg for the signature of an agreement between Isdefe and Norwegian Institute for Systems Engineering (NISE) at University of Southeast Norway (USN). Isdefe is owned by the Spanish Ministry of Defense.
Most prestigious institution in Europe
– For us this is an honour. NISE is the most renowned institution in Europe with connection to the most prestigious universities in the US, says Director of Consultancy and Strategic Processes in Isdefe Ángel L. Sanz. – So from one side we will get the best knowledge from academia. On the other side NISE has a unique system of industrial cooperation. Their programs are industrial oriented and they have a very good scheme of relation with the industry. And that is something we want to know how to implement. We want to learn from that specific way of creating knowledge, says Sanz.
Wants to increase their organisational knowledge
Isdefe has 31 years of experience in very technological projects around systems engineering. The company is based in Madrid with 1 500 employees.
The company wants to increase their organisational knowledge on systems engineering, project management and logistics support. They want to identify the state-of-the-art in those domains, absorb the appropriate knowledge, and also position themselves as an entity capable of earning international recognition due to their contributions in those disciplines.
–We can also provide our own expertise, find new ways and generate knowledge from both knowledge bases, provided we respect security regulations in order not to transfer knowledge that can be restricted by security and defense section obligations, says Sanz.
NISE has already started cooperation with renowned institutions in Madrid.
– Probably in the future we can have students of NISE in our company helping us as a part of their curricular activities, says Sanz.
A milestone for NISE
For NISE this collaboration agreement is a milestone – it is their first international agreement of this type in the ten years they have existed.
– This is a very special event for us, says professor Alberto Sols at Norwegian Institute for Systems Engineering (NISE). Sols has good knowledge in the disciplines Isdefe was looking for and was asked if he could help them. Sols replied he wanted to help via NISE.
– We are especially proud of NISE´s achievements in the Master in Systems Engineering. The students are tailored for our industries, says Pro-Rector at USN Nils Kristian Bogen who signed the contract with Business Development Director, Jesús Alonso from Isdefe.
After the agreement was officially made, the management from Isdefe visited GKN Aerospace and Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace.