The challenges for sustainable skills development in the UK automotive supply sector: policy and implementation

Original paper can be found at: http://www.gerpisa.univ-evry.fr/rencontre/16.rencontre/GERPISAJune2008/home.htmlThe European Automotive industry is a key strategic player in the European Union with an estimated 10 million workers. The majority of these work in the supply chain (CLEPA 2005). As a major employer, the sector must work to maintain its competitive edge if it is to keep that workforce engaged.Final Accepted Versio

Training: an inhibitor of innovation in the automotive supply chain?

Have training programmes become the new Taylorism: allowing OEMs to exercise control over their smaller suppliers and unconsciously preventing these SMEs from innovating, diversifying and growing to become competitive rivals? At the Lisbon Council in March 2000, European government leaders set themselves the target of making the European Union the “most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustained economic growth …” within ten years. Human resources are central to the creation and transmission of knowledge and a determining factor in the European automotive industry's potential for innovation. This research seeks to clarify whether the new skills that are being promoted across the supply chain are truly enablers for competitiveness and innovation. As currently practised they may be providing a less effective response to the Lisbon Agenda, i.e. increasing the distribution of skills without the depth that allows companies to become potentially innovative. For SMEs to be encouraged to grow, to be innovative and so be truly competitive, they need training support. The training may be designed just to tackle short term skills needs. It may be designed to instil the demonstrable best practice of its customer and lean manufacturing is an eminent example of this type. Training must also be designed in the context of where the SME aspires to be, to allow the SME to mature and develop. This research has highlighted the risk when externally promoted and funded training potentially constrains the potential for innovation and the Lisbon goals.Peer reviewe

Networking Innovation in the European Car Industry : Does the Open Innovation Model Fit?

The automobile industry is has entered an innovation race. Uncertain technological trends, long development cycles, highly capital intensive product development, saturated markets, and environmental and safety regulations have subjected the sector to major transformations. The technological and organizational innovations related to these transformations necessitate research that can enhance our understanding of the characteristics of the new systems and extrapolate the implications for companies as well as for the wider economy. Is the industry ready to change and accelerate the pace of its innovation and adaptability? Have the traditional supply chains transformed into supply networks and regional automobile ecosystems? The study investigates the applicability of the Open Innovation concept to a mature capital-intensive asset-based industry, which is preparing for a radical technological discontinuity - the European automobile industry - through interviewing purposely selected knowledgeable respondents across seven European countries. The findings contribute to the understanding of the OI concept by identifying key obstacles to the wider adoption of the OI model, and signalling the importance of intermediaries and large incumbents for driving network development and OI practices as well as the need of new competencies to be developed by all players.Peer reviewe

Plugging the gap – can planned infrastructure address resistance to adoption of electric vehicles?

Non peer reviewe

Motion Hub, the implementation of an integrated end-to-end journey planner

© AET 2018 and contributorsThe term “eMobility” and been brought into use partly to encourage use of electric vehicles but more especially to focus on the transformation from electric vehicles as products to electrified personal transport as a service. Under the wider umbrella of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) this has accompanied the growth of car clubs in general. The Motion Hub project has taken this concept a step further to include not just the car journey but the end-to-end journey. The booking of multifaceted journeys is well established in the leisure and business travel industries, where flights, car hire and hotels are regularly booked with a single transaction on a website. To complete an end-to-end scenario Motion Hub provides integration of public transport with electric vehicle and electric bike use. Building on a previous InnovateUK funded project that reviewed the feasibility of an integrated journey management system, the Motion Hub project has brought together a Car Club, a University, and EV infrastructure company, a bicycle hire company with electric bicycle capabilities and a municipality to implement a scheme and test it on the ground. At the heart of the project has been the development of a website that integrates the public transport booking with the hire of electric vehicles or bicycles. Taking the implementation to a fully working system accessible to members of the public presents a number of significant challenges. This paper identifies those challenges, details the progress and success of the Motion Hub and sets out the lessons learnt about end-to-end travel. The project was fortunate to have as its municipal partner the Council of a sizeable South East England town, Southend-on-Sea. With a population of 174,800 residents with good road, rail and air links there is considerable traffic in and out of the town. The Council has already shown its commitment to sustainable transport. In the previous six years it had installed a number of electric vehicle charging points for use by the public and latterly had trialled car club activity. An early challenge in the project was the location of physical infrastructure in an already crowded municipal space in order to provide the local ‘spokes’ of the system. In addition to its existing charging points, Southend now has four locations where electric cars can be hired, five where electric bikes are available and the local resources to maintain these assets. Combining a number of web-based services and amalgamating their financial transactions is relatively straightforward. However, introducing the potential for public transport ticketing as well raises additional security, scale and financial constraints. The project has engaged with major players and regulators across the public transport industry.Peer reviewe

CMB polarization power spectra contributions from a network of cosmic strings

We present the first calculation of the possible (local) cosmic string contribution to the cosmic microwave background polarization spectra from simulations of a string network (rather than a stochastic collection of unconnected string segments). We use field-theory simulations of the Abelian Higgs model to represent local U(1) strings, including their radiative decay and microphysics. Relative to previous estimates, our calculations show a shift in power to larger angular scales, making the chance of a future cosmic string detection from the B-mode polarization slightly greater. We explore a future ground-based polarization detector, taking the CLOVER project as our example. In the null hypothesis (that cosmic strings make a zero contribution) we find that CLOVER should limit the string tension mu to G mu < 0.12x10(-6) (where G is the gravitational constant), above which it is likely that a detection would be possible

Networking innovation in the European car industry: does the open innovation model fit?

The demands of transportation have driven the automobile industry into an innovation race. Uncertain technological trends, long development cycles, highly capital-intensive product development, saturated markets, and environmental and safety regulations have subjected the sector to major transformations. The technological and organisational innovations related to these transformations necessitate research that can enhance our understanding of the characteristics of the new systems. The study investigates the applicability of the Open Innovation concept to a mature capital-intensive asset-based industry - the European automobile industry, which is preparing for a radical technological discontinuity. Purposely selected knowledgeable respondents were interviewed across seven European countries. The findings contribute to the understanding of the OI concept by identifying key obstacles to the wider adoption of the OI model in the European car industry, and signalling the importance of intermediaries and large incumbents for driving network development and OI practices as well as the need of new competencies to be developed by all players