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This paper aims to address the different aspects of end-of-life (EOL) aircraft problems and their effects on original manufacturer’s supply chain. Aircraft manufacturers, in the greener aviation context, need to care about the footprint of planes at the EOL. Considering the challenges in EOL aircraft recovery, the reverse logistics and green supply chain solutions in the other industrial sections cannot be applied in the aerospace industry. A conceptual framework with four elements, supply chain competency, governance policy, relationship in supply chain and aerospace industry context, provides a basis for assessing the opportunities and challenges of the green supply chain in this industry.

The basic research method utilized in this paper is the literature review. The literature review is a research methodology that includes examining books, journals, conference proceedings and dissertations for available information on the area of research. The research area regarding EOL aircraft is new. A substantial amount of literature exists in the field of end-of-life vehicle, but the main content of literature about the aircraft recycling can be obtained via relatively few literature, technical reports, news and industrial experts’ opinions. The literature is complete in some respects while inadequate in others. A considerable amount of information has been gathered through graduate student projects. The other information has been collected via contacts with professionals involved in an EOL aircraft recycling project. The basis for this methodological framework comes from a research process proposed by Mayring (2010) that emphasizes on four steps: material collection, descriptive analysis, category section and material evaluation.

This paper addresses the opportunities and challenges of applying a green supply chain for aircraft manufacturers and analyzes the different aspects of aircraft at the EOL in the context of green supply chain.

This study enriches the literature by identifying EOL aircraft value chain analysis in the sustainable development context. It provides an introduction to a fresh research theme and sheds some light on green supply challenges in the aerospace industry.

The proposed conceptual framework in this paper helps practitioners to realize the opportunities and challenges of aircraft manufacturers in applying long-term strategies with respect to EOL aircrafts. The proposed framework helps manufacturers to evaluate different perspectives of the EOL aircraft problem. Moreover, the current contribution of aircraft manufacturers into EOL projects is not in a systematic structure and performed through several managerial and professional meetings. The proposed framework in this study is a valuable tool to evaluate the different opportunities and challenges in an organized way.

This work provides a valuable framework for future research related to green supply chains in the aerospace context. It also aids practitioners to realize the EOL aircraft problem in the context of the green supply chain, considering the opportunities and challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current research and development status and future directions of context‐aware systems (CAS) in the aerospace industry.

The paper applies a layered framework to analyse the current status of research and development of CAS in the aerospace industry from the perspectives of middleware, applications and business users. The approach is based on discussion and recent development of CAS in the general research domain. The resulting discussion is based on the authors' knowledge in both academic and industrial research.

It is suggested that the key challenges for a wider adaptation of CAS in the aerospace industry are the high cost of context modelling and a lack of understanding of their potential business value. The paper proposes future research to invest in the development of a more systematic research, to focus on a modular‐based technology configuration and to investigate how to evaluate CAS performance in the aerospace industrial setting.

The paper provides insight on issues that are preventing the wider adaptation of CAS in an industrial setting and outlines potential future research to resolve these issues.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of “product‐service” (P‐S) strategies in the aerospace sector. Despite the widespread perception that aerospace organisations are advanced in terms of P‐S integration, little is known about the realities of P‐S provision in the sector. Much of the existing literature is normative and prescriptive, focusing upon what organisations aspire to do, but offers little insights into how attempts to integrate products and services occur or the challenges organisations encounter.

This paper presents an in‐depth case study of an international aerospace original equipment manufacturer, referred to as “JetCo”. A total of 18 interviews were conducted with key actors involved in the operationalisation of P‐S strategy within defence aerospace and civil aerospace divisions. In addition, analysis of internal company documentation was also undertaken.

This paper reveals that current P‐S strategy, which builds upon a long history of service offerings, initially evolved separately in each division in response to the particular markets in which they operate. However, there was evidence of a corporate‐wide strategy for P‐S provision being developed across divisions to improve co‐ordination. This was founded on the recognition that P‐S delivery requires the development of a stronger customer orientation, better knowledge and information management strategies and the engagement of employees. A key challenge concerned integrating the product and service parts of the business to ensure consistent delivery of a seamless value offering to customers.

The paper offers fresh empirical evidence into the development of P‐S in an organisation drawn from a sector often flagged as an exemplar of P‐S provision, and provides insights into the complex realities of P‐S implementation and delivery. Notably, it highlights the challenge of attempting to embed an organisation‐wide “service culture” in pursuit of integrated P‐S delivery, and questions the nostrums and overly simplistic models which pervade the current solutions discourse.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that synergy between firms and local institutions may lead to success even in an economic environment which cannot offer competitive advantages to high tech industrial clustering. However, the condition for such a complex result is convergence between cluster‐based regional development policy, the related industry national strategy and the central government preferential policy for less developed areas.

The experiences selected as case studies are the Xi'an National Civil Aerospace Base in Shaanxi Province (China) and CampaniAerospace in Campania region (Italy). As information was gathered both through policy documents (China and Italy) and direct interviews to cluster's stakeholders (Italy), the outcome is, according to the criteria suggested by Eisenhardt and Yin, a qualitative research. Comparing economic data provided by the respective countries' Statistical Offices, the authors assessed that Shaanxi Province and the Campania region share a “peripheral” position within their respective national context. Starting from this, the authors analyzed the formal documents which reported the experience of the two clusters.

The finding is that the outcome (the status of cluster which is assumed as “a value in itself”) of the convergence between firms' will to gain agglomeration advantages and the policymakers' plan to redress interregional economic disparities is definitely not an efficiency‐driven process. In the high tech sectors which are very sensitive to the increasing competition for technology on the international market, the pursuit of efficiency may, on the contrary, be dissipated.

As attested by the comparative literature, aims and performance of industrial clusters differ in accordance with the stage of economic development as well as the institutional and regulatory framework. The paper demonstrates, however, that in the take‐off stage, it is the position occupied by the host region within the national context which determines the behaviour of the actors concerned as well as the outcome of their commitment.

This paper aims to introduce and explore the creation, transfer, diffusion and application of knowledge in the Chinese context and the Chinese aerospace management modes, methodologies and mechanism, etc., based on the successful managerial experience of China’s aerospace. The paper then illustrates the current research domains and the future research opportunities in knowledge and aerospace management in China.

Review and reflection.

The Chinese knowledge management theory has achieved great development, the focus of which covers the whole chain from knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing to knowledge application. However, Chinese aerospace management studies seem not so systematic, although some successful managerial practices and theories are being introduced. There is an opportunity to construct the Chinese aerospace management theory due to its features with general implications to high technology industries in China. Especially, integrating knowledge and aerospace, or studying aerospace from the perspective of knowledge, is a promising way of formulating a logic for deciphering China’s aerospace. It is also anticipated that qualitative methodology and Chinese traditional philosophy will be more popular in Chinese management studies.

This paper, by introducing some new research in knowledge management and aerospace management in China, outlines the current situations of Chinese knowledge and aerospace management research and sheds lights on the future research in aspects of research topics, research methodologies and Chinese traditional philosophy. For the first time, this paper provides the basic logic of Chinese knowledge management research and integrates Chinese aerospace management studies to reveal to the world the uniqueness and facts of China’s aerospace industry.

This paper seeks to examine how aerospace design and integration teams in a highly partnered supply chain are able to leverage extant capabilities and develop new ones when faced with the necessity to adapt to organizational change.

Building on the concept of contextual ambidexterity (Gibson and Birkinshaw), this research uses a combination of qualitative material and objective performance data to investigate the working context of five aerospace design and integration teams, their solutions to crisis-triggering events, and their subsequent schedule adherence.

Team members enacted ambidextrous roles similar to those identified by Birkinshaw and Gibson. These behaviors allowed teams to create ambidextrous solutions when faced with crisis. Teams working in a supportive context were found to produce a greater diversity of ambidextrous solutions, which was found to relate to both overall ambidexterity and schedule adherence performance.

Although the results should be interpreted with care, the research answers Raisch and Birkinshaw's call for a more precise definition of organizational ambidexterity as the paper focuses on specific roles played by team members. The findings also point to a potential link between the diversity of ambidextrous behavioral roles and their ability to craft ambidextrous solutions.

Teams that can quickly adapt to challenge through ambidextrous solutions are particularly useful in the context of highly partnered supply chains. Managers should therefore actively promote ambidextrous behaviors to ensure that the search for ambidextrous solutions becomes a conscious and deliberate process.

This paper substantiates the ambidexterity concept by providing concrete examples drawn from highly partnered aerospace supply chains.

The evolution of the business-to-business (BtoB) realm toward solution business calls for a better understanding of how relationships develop over time in such a renewed context. This paper aims to propose a phase model for solution relationship development, considering triadic relationships in complex engineering solutions.

To depict how relationships develop in solution business, the authors adopt a qualitative approach which allows to detail the episodes of interactions between the actors. A case study approach in an extreme sector – the aerospace industry – allows highlighting certain key traits. Extending conventional dyadic analysis, this empirical study focuses on the aerospace industry, using a case study approach to analyze relationship developments between a worldwide leading aircraft manufacturer, one of its customer and four providers of products and services. The authors adopt a triadic perspective in the selection of cases, considering a total of four manufacturer-provider-customer triads.

Four dynamic phases which track solution provision dynamics and involving dyadic and triadic relationship evolution are identified: matching; combining; mixing; and sharing. Each phase calls, from a management perspective, for specific competencies and resources of the actors in interaction.

This paper contributes to the gap about solution relationship development in a changing BtoB landscape. Considering the lens of a triadic approach, the paper also helps to fill the as-yet unattended to gap between dyads and triads in the literature.

The main aim of this paper is to investigate the way middle managers picture their career success and the business strategy of their firm with the following key question in mind: “Is there a relationship between the two?”.

This research is based on a “polar sample” of two companies of the Canadian aerospace industry that use generic business strategies which differ considerably along the continuum of strategic approaches from one another. A list of 50 people was made in collaboration with the executives of the companies investigated. A total of 74 percent (37) of the middle managers invited to be interviewed accepted the invitation. The interviews lasted on average 90 minutes. They were analyzed using NVivo software.

The analysis yielded a set of four empirical configurations of career success. The idea of central orchestrating theme has been at the core of configuration theory since its inception but few researchers have set the task to investigate them let alone in studying career success. Four core unifying themes were found: “just watch me”, “one for all and all for one”, “eureka”, and “thanks but no thanks”. Each of the company strategies provides a receptive context for no more than two coexisting configurations of career success, one leading to a rapid ascent and the other to a slower one.

Few studies have looked into how middle managers portray career success for themselves. Furthermore, the literature is wanting in another crucial respect: the researchers do not take into consideration the particular strategic context of the firm. This paper argues that the paths toward career success must be understood in the context of the business strategy of the firms that give them form, meaning, and substance.

Remote monitoring technology (RMT) is widely acknowledged as an important enabler of servitisation however, there is a dearth of understanding about how RMT is used by manufacturing firms to support servitised strategies. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this important yet somewhat ignored topic in servitisation research. It attempts to address the following questions: what has constrained, and what has enabled the exploitation of RMT in the context of servitised strategies?

The research adopts an exploratory multiple-case study design. Four in-depth descriptive case studies of companies operating in aerospace, industrial equipment, marine, and transport sectors were conducted. The collected data were analysed and synthesised, drawing out conclusions.

The study describes how four manufacturers are using RMT and identifies ten factors that have enabled and constrained the realisation of expected outcomes. The enabling factors identified include: skills, experience, and knowledge; support from customers and other complementary data sources, processes, and structures; operations centres; historical data; and presence of in-house knowledge and capabilities. While the constraining factors include: defining benefits of RMT; limitations of RMT; limited understanding about true capabilities of RMT; knowledge management; and lack of alignment between services and manufacturing strategies.

While considerable attention and effort have been invested in designing and conducting the research and analysing the data from the case studies, more empirical work is required to validate and enrich findings and conclusions. For this purpose several research questions to guide further theory development in this area are formulated.

This paper is an in-depth study examining the role of RMT in supporting servitised strategies. In particular, it explores how this technology is used in practice to support service-oriented value propositions of manufacturers and identifies the factors that are key to successfully executing this strategy. As such it qualifies as one of the first studies of this kind.

The purpose of this paper is to show with figures the potentialities of knowledge‐based engineering (KBE) methods in new product development (NPD). It estimates the business value generated by a tool which integrates the handoff between engineering groups of a large aerospace company.

The paper is based on three years of observation and interviews at a leading Italian firm. A process‐based approach is used for assessing business value.

The KBE application automated the preparation of data transferred to computer‐aided engineering engineers for analysis by computer‐aided design engineers and reduced the time required by more than 90 percent. This allowed time savings which contributed to enhance product quality.

The paper is based on a single case, though its findings are consistent with prior studies. Future research will implement like applications in other contexts at the subject firm and other firms.

The paper helps managers to understand the uses and potential value of KBE applications, enhancing the awareness of NPD practitioners in a field which is still partially untapped.

The paper combines discussion of the technical aspects of implementing a KBE tool with estimates of performance improvement achieved. It can be a useful illustration of a good practice and a proof‐of‐concept for further implementations in complex engineering settings.