Search

Byline: Philip Cooke, Oliver Ehret This paper contrasts proximities, skills and knowledge in the aerospace industry of Wales, UK. It distinguishes between three areas of main strengths and assesses their current and future viability. North Wales represents a vertical production supply chain cluster dominated by an Airbus plant. The industry in South Wales is more fragmented and less embedded in the region, and qualifies as an agglomeration. The advent of composites as the wing material of the future devalues the metal expertise of the north and calls for the development of composite skills. The south builds on a more heterogeneous knowledge base requiring diversified strategies for knowledge development, but should benefit most from fostering composite RDT.

Byline: Oliver Ehret, Philip Cooke Lean production and supply concepts are amongst the most influential management theories. Yet, they have scarcely been applied to aerospace, an industry sector of great importance. This paper identifies generic trends in aerospace outsourcing and explores to what extent the lean supply approach is fit to conceptualise them. It investigates to what degree the outsourcing strategies of Airbus UK and the wider Airbus operations are explicable with the lean approach. The paper finds that lean is capable of conceptualising most generic trends in aerospace outsourcing and most of the Airbus policies. Lean neglects the relevance of knowledge to outsourcing, however, and fails to recognise the diversity of the Airbus supply approach. Knowledge management in this process is now crucial. Technological capabilities are central to the Airbus strategies, illustrating the need to acknowledge knowledge as a key explanatory parameter of outsourcing theory. In conclusion, we find the higher the knowledge content, the more partnering occurs, the lower the content, the more hierarchical the relationship are.

Byline: Michael Steiner, Javier Alfonso Gil, Oliver Ehret, Michael Ploder, Rudiger Wink Most scientific studies on innovation deal with high-technology sectors, although medium-technology industries are still the most relevant contributors to employment and market shares in Europe. Based on three different methodological approaches (social network analysis, regression analysis and qualitative research), the importance of technology-specific, firm-specific and region-specific factors on the structure of innovation networks in medium-technology sectors is investigated. It can be shown within this explorative study that networks in the four investigated case regions increasingly rely on knowledge instead of material linkages and firm characteristics determine the position of organisations within the networks. The actual structure of networks and the choice, which firm-specific factors are important for network positions, vary across the regions and cannot be explained by general regional characteristics. Thus, more concrete research on single regions is still necessary.

The article provides information on the study on hydrogen mobility and its status, trends, perspectives in order to gain a better understanding of the future viability of hydrogen-based mobility conducted by Prof. Dr. Bratzel - Center of Automotive Management, Research institute in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. Topics discussed includes gas industry, hydrogen production and hydrogen transportation.

Copyright of HZwei: Das Magazin für Wasserstoff und Brennstoffzellen is the property of Hydrogeit Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)