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From Modular Innovation to Systems Integration: the Main Experiences from some Italian Machine Tool Builders
TLDR
In this paper, the authors investigate the technological know-how of some Italian machine tool builders and to understand the industrial organizational model of these firms between the machine-tool builders and their main suppliers.Abstract:
In the last few decades, the increasing specialization in multi-technologies and multiproducts firms has made production a complex task. In particular, it is more and more difficult to transfer the knowledge from one firm to another (Paoli, 2003). Scholars answered this problem by means of formulating the concept of modular architecture (Ulrich, 1995) and modular organization (Sanchez & Mahoney, 1996). However, high technological firms need to know more than just what they produce; in other words, the boundaries of the firms are, in terms of knowledge, wider than what such firms produce (Brusoni, Prencipe, & Pavitt, 2001). Among the innovative and technological advanced firms there are the Italian machine tools firms. The aim of this paper is to investigate the technological know-how of some Italian machine tool builders and to understand the industrial organizational model of these firms between the machine tool builders and their main suppliers. In order to do it, there have been interviewed three representative firms of the sector. The main result of this research is that the firms interviewed are losing their technological know-how in favour of their suppliers. The systems integration approach has been proposed as an emerging industrial organizational model to develop and increase the technological know-how of the Italian machine tool builders.read more
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References
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Ron Sanchez,Joseph T. Mahoney +1 more
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