The European e-Business Report The European e ... - empirica

The European E-Business Report 2005
but the correlation coefficients show even higher values for the aeronautics industry compared to the
joint transport equipment sector.
This suggests firstly that there are market- and sector-specific differences in the relationship between
innovation and performance variables, emphasising the importance of a sector-specific analysis.
Secondly, it could be that firms in the aeronautics industry have more trouble in appropriating profits
from innovation in general.
Integration of the supply chain
The aeronautics industry is characterised by a unique structure shaped by complex relationships
between firms in the value chain and the small number of system integrators, i.e. primes. The industry
supply chain has been further evolving in recent years and the transformation of the aeronautics
industry closely resembles the changes that have taken place in other manufacturing industries, for
example, in the automotive sector. The process of industry transformation has some important
implications to the development of e-business in the aeronautics sector.
Searching for a greater flexibility and leaner organisational structures, prime contractors and system
integrators perceive outsourcing as an attractive alternative to producing inputs in-house. However,
smooth data exchange between separate enterprises has not been achieved. Different companies use
different ICT systems and data stemming from one firm could be used only within that entity and its
system. Sending data to another company that uses a different ICT system requires a translation of
the input into the language used by the latter’s applications. In practice, this means that a company’s
employee has to manually insert the data into the system. Such a method is very costly and errorprone.
Industry-wide standards have been perceived as the best way to overcome the problems
related to the use of heterogeneous data exchange formats and protocols.
SMEs in the aeronautics sector face an increasing pressure from their customers to implement ICT
applications that support the integration of inter-firm processes. However, as different companies use
different systems, smooth data exchange between separate companies has not yet been achieved.
Thus, in order to comply with customers’ technical requirements, SMEs face the dilemma of adopting
several systems and bear the costs and workload or risk losing a customer. A possible solution to this
problem is, again, the development of industry-wide standards.
The development of such standards is, however, still in progress. 28% of companies said that they
utilise proprietary standards and only 12% that they have XML-based applications. This therefore
justifies such industry initiatives as the Boost Aero project. The project aims at creating industry-wide
web-based standards for supply chain data exchange formats and technological architecture. The
underlying intention behind this initiative is to address the problem of multiple and heterogeneous
applications deployed in the aeronautics industry.
The case studies on Mecahers (France), the Polish aeronautics industry, and on e-PME, a project by
AFNeT (French Association of Internet Users), highlight some of the issues relevant to the integration
of the supply chain in the aeronautics industry.
Case studies and business examples
The sector report on the aeronautics industry (July 2005) contains short case studies and examples of
e-business activity in companies from the sector. These 'activity views' support the analysis of findings
both from the survey and from desk research, and provide further insight in current e-business trends
and developments. Exhibit 2.7-3 summarises the 'activity views' which are featured in more detail in
the report.
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