Arbeit - Umwelt Am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin Für Sozialforschung

Schriftenreihe der Forschungsgruppe "Große technische Systeme" des Forschungsschwerpunkts Technik - Arbeit - Umwelt am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung FS II93-506 The Airbus Matrix: The Reorganization of the Postwar European Aircraft Industry Glenn E. Bugos Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung gGmbH (WZB) Reichpietschufer 50, D-10785 Berlin Tel. (030)-25 491-0 Fax (030)-25 491-254 od. -684 THE AIRBUS MATRIX: THE REORGANIZATION OF THE POSTWAR EUROPEAN AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY Abstract The history of the European airbus family has several implications for large technical sytems research. First, it represents the successful attempt of the European aircraft industry at breaking the American monopoly on the technical key component of global air traffic, namely the production of large passenger aircraft. Secondly, it stands for a major technical development project in which not only R&D activities of many heterogeneous and partly rivaling enterprises had to be harmonized but also the research and economic policies of various European countries. Thirdly, it is an account of the establishment and operation of a production system that—being scattered all over Europe—heavily depends on communication, logistics and other infrastructure systems. The author relates the history of European aircraft industry from the first European cooperative projects in the area of military aircraft and missile engineering up to the commercial breakthrough of the civil airbus in the 1980s. According to the author, the transition from conventional, rather rigid staff/line organization to flexible matrix organizations that are adaptable to heterogeneous conditions was the crucial prerequisite for the success of the air bus program. DIE AIRBUS-MATRIX: ZUR REORGANISIERUNG DER EUROPÄISCHEN LUFTFAHRTINDUSTRIE NACH DEM 2. WELTKRIEG Zusammenfassung Die Geschichte der Airbus-Flugzeugfamilie ist für die Forschung zu den großen technischen Systemen in mehrfacher Hinsicht von Bedeutung. Es geht dabei zum einen um den erfolgreichen Versuch der europäischen Industrie,das amerikanische Herstellermonopol für die zentrale technische Komponente des weltweiten Flugverkehrsystems, eben für Passagierflugzeuge, aufzubrechen. Zum zweiten gehtes um ein großes technisches Entwicklungsprojekt, in dem sowohl die Forschung und Entwicklung von vielen, relativ heterogenen, teilweise sogar miteinander konkurrierenden Unternehmen als auch die Forschungs- und Wirtschaftspolitik verschiedener europäischer Länder unter einen Hut gebracht werden mußten. Und zum dritten schließlich geht es um den Aufbau und Betrieb eines über ganz Europa verteilten Produktionssystems, das in hohem Maße von. kommunikations- und transporttechnischen Infrastruktursystemen abhängt. Ausgehend von den ersten europäischen Kooperationsprojekten im Bereich des militärischen Flugzeug- und Raketenbaus zeichnet der Autor die Geschichte der europäischen Flugzeugindustrie bis zum kommerziellen Durchbruch des Airbussen in den achtziger Jahren nach. Der Schritt von der traditionellen, eher starren Stab-/Linien-Organisation zur flexiblen, den heterogenen Bedingungen anpaßbaren Matrixorganisationen war - so die These des Autors - die wichtigste Voraussetzung für den Erfolg des Airbusprogramms. By the mid-1970s, the European aircraft industry was considered a model of Euro pean industrial integration. It was heavily integrated vertically. That is, beginning in the late 1950s state ministries in Britain, France, Germany and other European states, intervened to consolidate their nation's small, diverse aircraft firms into one diversified national champion big enough to challenge the economies of scale enjoyed by American aircraft firms. By the mid-1970s, Aerospatiale dominated the French aircraft industry, Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm dominated in Germany, British Aerospace in Britain, Aeritalia in Italy, CASA in Spain, Fokker in the Neth erlands, Saab in Sweden, Hellenic Aerospace in Greece, and so on. The European aircraft industry was also heavily integrated horizontally around product consortia. Again through the active intervention of state ministries, beginning in the mid-1960s, these national champions increasingly wedded them selves to collaborative and international projects, like the Concorde, the Airbus, the Tornado fighter, the Roland missile. To develop these aircraft, the national firms created unique consortia that dominated that product area in Europe—Airbus Indus trie GIE in transports, PANA VIA GmbH in fighters, and Euromissile and Euro copter. As an alternative to this European strategy for launching aircraft programs, several European firms pursued an American strategy by creating joint ventures with American firms like Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas. Two organizational ideas illuminate this history of integration. The first is that of the consortium form of organization. There were many ways to construct "a consortium," and those managers, engineers and politicians that rebuilt the European aircraft industry used two general types of consortia. To create the national cham pions, state defense or aviation ministries awarded maintenance and production contracts to reward consortia that fixed the capital and manpower assets of diverse firms. These arrangements generated economies of scale, moved the firms farther down the learning curve, and rationalized the accumulation and specialization of skills, thus facilitating the ultimate fusion of these firms. During the programming of the European aircraft industry, state ministries arranged risk-fixing consortia that committed these firms to getting one new aircraft into the air, but without disrupting the capital and resource structures of those firms. The second organizational idea is that of matrix organization. American aerospace firms in the 1960s adopted a matrix organization to depict the continuing, balanced interaction between program heads and departmental heads, and how they shared equal authority over the daily work of any individual engineer. The makers of the European aircraft industries adopted the matrix image to show, on an interna tional level, how the lines of functional authority in the various national firms crossed with the lines of program authority in the various aircraft consortia. The firms maintained expertise; the consortia then pulled from those firms the expertise they needed to get an aircraft into the air. When viewed through the prism of the matrix organization, the reconstruction of the European aircraft industry falls into three periods. First, the creation of functional groups, that is, larger, more skilled national aircraft companies in the European states, beginning in roughly 1956 and peaking in 1970. Second, the crea tion of program groups, that is, international aircraft consortia like Airbus Industrie GIE and PAN AVI A Tornado GmbH, beginning in roughly 1964 and again peaking in 1970. Third, from 1970 to the present, the consolidation of the matrix and the creation of engineering protocols to routinize transactions between the two groups. National Champions In 1955 the occupying forces returned an aircraft plant to Walter Blohm, chairman of the Blohm & Voß GmbH, a shipbuilding firm in Hamburg. Blohm had founded the plant in 1933 on Finkenwerder island in the Elbe to build large flying boats for Lufthansa, and then expanded it in 1936 to build transport and marine patrol aircraft for the Nazi regime. The buildings at Finkenwerder had escaped Allied bombs, but had been stripped clean of machinery by the occupying forces or Blohm's civilian ship-building plant. Blohm's engineering staff was also dispersed: some to Ameri can, British, or French aircraft firms, others to German plants converted to civil uses. With these civil plants and a consumer-oriented economic policy, German engineers had worked die Wirtschaftswunder, brought Germany back to die state of the art in many industries, and had established Germany as a stable potential member of the Atlantic alliance. In May 1955 the occupying forces allowed the German government, on the front lines of a cold war, to begin rearming the Bundeswehr and to begin building their own aircraft. Walter Blohm wrote to Dr. Hermann Vogt, his wartime aircraft designer, and asked Vogt to return from Dayton, Ohio to run Blohm's newly re opened Hamburger Flugzeugbau GmbH. First on the Bundeswehr's shopping list was a transport plane, not unlike those Vogt had designed during the war. Since 2 1951, former Nazi aircraft builders like Blohm had denounced the Allies' prohibition against German aircraft production as an economically-motivated effort to prevent competition from the German industry, arguably at a high level technologically after the war. They believed that as soon as Germans could begin building aircraft, Ger man aircraft would dominate the international market.1 But Blohm's hopes for a quick and complete rebirth were thwarted. Vogt declined his invitation to return, citing better opportunities in America. Also, the German government was politically pressured to show its interdependence with NATO, so they bought aircraft from their new European allies. More importantly, Bundeswehr officers were uncertain about the level of production expertise in these new German firms, and wanted to be sure they could maintain foreign-bought air craft before they diverted their expertise into designing German aircraft. In 1957 the Bundeswehr bought fifty Nord 2501 "Noratlas" transports, to be built in northern Germany, under license from Nord Aviation in

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