danish research unit for industrial dynamics druid working paper no ...

35welding system integrating robot and engineering processes into the same conception. Thissolution, allowing a good synchronisation of product and process, is a major innovation,based on a specific methodology for welding. The cooperation between the two firms wasintensive between 1976 and 1982 and less regular after this period. Fiat was however notwilling to invest in new technological cooperation and wanted to exploit a technicalsolution to improve the process, Comau began to explore new technical opportunities withforeign users. Agreements with Citroën and Mercedes were illustrative of this new way ofworking. This exploration was crucial for Comau which had an important know-how in themachine tool business and needed to transform it by integrating new kinds of knowledge inelectronic trajectory. The cooperation between Comau and Mercedes in 1991 for a weldingsystem, which took as its dominant design the "Robogate", gives a better idea of thisdynamic. In the case of the "Robogate", user and producer were adapting the weldingsystem to the plant configuration, but the particular configuration of the Sindelfingenchanged the routinized way of working. These new constraints transformed the weldingsystem bringing new innovative solutions in the way the robot approached the car. Insteadof exploiting the same methodology, Comau managed in recombining existing technicalsolutions and organisational procedures for improving and renewing previous innovations.This cooperation which created the "Rotogate" benefited from important learningexternalities with other users. Comau had in 1986 began to work with BMW for improvingthe "Robogate" on the E 30 model. Comau and BMW concluded an informal agreementtwo years later for improving this system during the E 34 launching. This very ambitiousproject failed because of time delays and excessive material investments for the two firms.The failure was relative and gave Comau experience useful in its cooperation withMercedes three years later. Comau was able to create a specific solution, to use this localknowledge and it had the capacity to extract abstract knowledge from practice.As we can see, most of the time local and general knowledge is complementary. Asillustrated by Fleck in his concept of "learning by trying", successful implementation of atechnology is "a matter of finding a synthesis of local and generic knowledge adequate formeeting particular requirements" (Fleck, 1994, p. 647).* Level of centralisation