Abstract
There is widespread agreement that we are witnessing a transition to a new type of economy fuelled not so much by the production of goods and services, but by the generation and circulation of knowledge (Florida 1995). Competitive advantage is increasingly seen to stem less from traditional capabilities in manufacturing, assembly, distribution or service, and more from the possession of unique capabilities based on know-how. In this so-called ‘knowledge economy’, knowledge has become a key component of conventional manufacturing activity. Correspondingly, the idea that knowledge has become the critical resource needing to be managed has taken root within the management literature (e.g. von Krogh, Roos and Kleine 1998) and has spawned all manner of approaches and perspectives. Knowledge management is now regarded by some to be the latest management ‘fad’ (Scarbrough and Swan 1999).
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Endnotes
The term ‘value added system’ is used as a generic descriptor for any such system, while the term ‘project value system’ is used when referring to a specific project.
It was recently reported that in the railway industry’s ‘first major example of alliancing ... [between] ... Railtrack, Balfour Beatty Rail and Westinghouse Signals ... a bespoke form of insurance policy had to be drawn up for the alliance’, because the project structure was so novel (Abbott 2000, p.12).
It is no accident that Nissan located its new R&D facility near Cranfield, close to the West Midlands automotive industry, rather than with its assembly facility in Sunderland in the North East of England.
More details have been presented elsewhere (Alderman et al. 1997; Alderman, Thwaites and Maffin 2000).
Mecho appears to maintain a closer relationship with its more local suppliers, but in this case supplier 10 is concerned with fabrication which, whilst important, is not a significant source of innovation.
The other main aspect of the project concerned the provision of the process equipment inside the factory, but this was subject to commercial secrecy and not the subject of our detailed study.
These organisations covered architectural design, mechanical and electrical design and quantity surveying/cost estimating.
In practice, individual companies can overcome this, because they can go outside the region for that knowledge, but the region itself arguably is less able to do so.
The factual information relating to this case study is drawn from the public domain rather than original empirical fieldwork, specifically the April 2000 edition of Modern Railways (Abbott 2000). We are currently studying another major train manufacturer, ALSTOM, and its contract with Virgin to build the high speed tilting trains for the West Coast Main Line (McLoughlin et al. 2000). This material is subject to confidentiality constraints at the present time. However, there are many similarities in terms of the overall structure and complexity of the project, as Virgin have clearly applied the same philosophy in each case.
Bombardier are supplying 352 vehicles to Virgin: a mix of tilting and non-tilting DEMUs.
GL Trains is a specialist company jointly owned by an American leasing company and Lombard, a subsidiary of Natwest Bank.
This process is supported by a range of other actors, safety assessors, testing authorities and acceptance bodies, including Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate.
Bombardier manufacture at Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Other important centres include Adtranz at Derby in the East Midlands and ALSTOM at Birmingham in the West Midlands.
Recently acquired by Knorr Bremse of Germany.
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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Alderman, N. (2001). Distributed Knowledge in Complex Engineering Project Networks: Implications for Regional Innovation Systems. In: Fischer, M.M., Fröhlich, J. (eds) Knowledge, Complexity and Innovation Systems. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04546-6_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04546-6_11
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