From 'aircraft manufacturer' to 'architect-integrator': Airbus's industrial organisation model

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show that Airbus's success can be attributed to two types of factors. First, each new aircraft model has produced a technological breakthrough in the design and manufacturing of aircraft. Secondly, Airbus's capacity to evolve their industrial organisation model in keeping with the technological transformations. In this trajectory, modularisation and outsourcing policies have played major roles. In particular, they play a major role in the emergence of new actors the pivot-firms. These firms have a critical position in management of technical and organisational interfaces between the architect-integrator and the firms participating in the design and production of aircrafts.

Resilience of organisations and territories: The role of pivot firms

“…Pivot firms are generally firms from a particular industry which are very specialised. For example in the aeronautical field (Kechidi, 2013;Talbot, 2013), the construction of an aircraft is carried out under the responsibility of an architect-integrator of aeronautical systems (Airbus or Boeing), by a small number of pivot firms which are very specialised in a particular block of knowledge (Thales, Goodrich, Honeywell Liehberr, Rockwell, Vought, Alenia, etc.) and a whole network of small and medium-sized companies which are highly diversified and geographically close together.…”

“…the micro-economic level, whereas the second is from the meso-economic point of view of the interactions between the different actors in the territory under consideration. We focus our analysis on a particular type of actor, that we call pivot firms (Cagli et al, 2009;Gilly et al, 2011;Kechidi, 2013;Talbot, 2013). These are firms which have the technical and organisational capacity to coordinate a network of actors.…”