Abstract:
The aerospace manufacturing industry is predicted to continue growing.
Understanding its evolution is thus essential to prepare optimal conditions to
nurture its growth. This research aims to help the growth of emerging aerospace
ecosystems by identifying evolution patterns and categorising key enablers that
have encouraged the growth of developed ones. The term aerospace ecosystem
is used to embrace all the business activities and infrastructure that are related
to the entire aerospace’s supply chain in a specific country.
Inspired by studies that have successfully combined economics and network
science, in this research, bipartite country-product networks are developed based
on trade data over 25 years. The United Kingdom (UK), the United States of
America, France, Germany, Canada and Brazil’s are first analysed as evidence
suggests that their aerospace ecosystems are within the most developed in the
world. Then, China and Mexico’s networks are analysed and compared with
developed ones, as these countries have evidenced emergent aerospace
ecosystems. Results reveal that developed ecosystems tend to become more
analogous, as countries lean towards having a revealed comparative advantage
(RCA) in the same group of products. Further analysis shows that manufactured
products have a stronger correlation to an aerospace ecosystem than primary
products; and in particular, the automotive sector shows the highest correlation
with positive aerospace sector evolution.
Key enablers related to the growth of the UK and Mexico’s aerospace
ecosystems are identified and categorised using interpretive structural modelling
(ISM) and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC)
methodologies. Results evidence relevant differences in the categorisation of key
enablers among a developed and emergent aerospace ecosystems. On the other
hand, it was identified that geopolitical factors and the automotive ecosystem are
underpinning enablers for both aerospace ecosystem’s evolution.
The final aim is that results of this research could be implemented on emerging
aerospace ecosystems by emulating the patterns and key enablers that have
characterised the evolution of developed aerospace ecosystems.