"Strategic Methodology for the Creation and Administration of a Collaborative Network of SMEs for the Aerospace Industry in Mexico"-Edición Única

Abstract

The Aerospace Industry represents almost US $500bn around the world and fore some countries like the U.S., more than 15% of their economy is related to this Industry. Mexico is trying to become a new player, despite supplying just US $600m to the U.S.-based Industry, it has been showing several signs of growth and consolidation. Mexico supply just 0.9% of U.S. aerospace imports. Mexico needs to innovate its traditional way of doing business if it wants to succeed in the Aerospace Industry. Mexico needs to become highly competitive in a market in which we are incumbents and in which our traditional core competencies (cheap labor, closeness to the U.S. and strategic position in the global economy) are not that great differentiators. The Mexican Federal Government has defined the Aerospace Industry as one of the key strategic sectors for Mexico in the 21st century, but the HOW of this has not been approached by anyone yet. This opportunity for the Mexican economy cannot be overlooked. Therefore an entity in charge of looking for the overall good of the Industry needs to be proposed and implemented.

Collaborative Networks (CN) can be the solution to the issues presented to the Mexican Aerospace Industry. The development of such Collaborative Networks that includes Mexican Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) will improve the overall competitiveness of the Industry, ultimately creating a world-class aerospace cluster in Mexico. The author proposed an Aerospace Industry Collaborative Network (AICON) as an innovative business concept that works with the objective of developing and improving the performance of the Aerospace Supplier Cluster in Mexico.

The AICON concept proposed includes the creation of a nation-wide Aerospace Virtual Cluster formed by a set of several regional or OEM-driven sub-networks or clusters. A set of particular functions done as a network for the companies and overall well is proposed. This set of functions include tools to improve the sourcing process, logistic aspects, competence creation and many others that are particularly needed in the Aerospace competitive environment. Besides these particular functionality designed specifically for the Mexican Aerospace Industry, an evaluation of a group of functions proposed by ECOLEAD through its Collaborative Network Reference Model (ARCON) is evaluated and prioritized to ensure the general correct implementation of any given CN.

In order to validate some of the special functionality designed for the Aerospace Industry, a Case Study was done with an Aerospace OEM and its network of suppliers in order to create one of the OEM-driven sub-networks proposed in this Thesis. This sub-networks is the basis of the future creation of the nation-wide AICON.