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Aerospace Corrosion Control is to be the subject of a Symposium which is to take place on 28th February to 2nd March 1989, at The Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire, Scotland. It has attracted a wide ranging body of international expertise, and will focus attention on the emerging techniques, materials and equipment that are necessary to counter the effects of corrosion within aircraft structures and engines.

Describes the new paint facility at Vauxhall′s Ellesmere Port plant, focusing on the MAP 3.0 communications system. Details the characteristics and capabilities of the system and how it has contributed to quality improvements in the areas of: automated vehicle location; data collection; information and control; and painting operations.

Vauxhall's new Ellesmere Port paint shop brings a range of manufacturing and environmental improvements, designed not only to ensure a consistently high quality of paint finish and better productivity, but also reduced use of paint solvents, increased energy efficiency and new potential for recycling waste material. Durr Limited supplied the prime and paint finishing plant, whilst sister company Behr supplied and project managed the paint application and distribution equipment.

In this paper we extend established concepts of product and process architectures to propose a concept of organization architecture that defines the essential features of the system design of an organization needed to achieve an effective strategic alignment of an organization with its competitive and/or cooperative environment. Adopting a work process view of organization, we draw on concepts of product and process architectures to elaborate fundamental elements in the design of an organization architecture. We suggest that organization architectures may be designed to support four basic types of change in organization resources, capabilities, and coordination, which we characterize as convergence, reconfiguration, absorptive integration, and architectural transformation. We also suggest the kinds of strategic flexibilities that an organization must have to create and implement each type of organization architecture. We identify four basic types of strategic environments and consider the kinds of changes in resources, capabilities, and coordination that need to be designed into an organization's architecture to maintain effective strategic alignment with its type of environment. We then propose a typology that identifies four basic ways in which organizational architectures may be effectively aligned with strategic environments. Extending the reasoning underlying the proposed alignments of organization architectures with strategic environments, we propose a strategic principle of architectural isomorphism, which holds that maintaining effective strategic alignment of an organization with its environment requires achieving isomorphism across a firm's product, process, and organization architectures. We conclude by considering some implications of the analyses undertaken here for competence theory, general and mid-range strategy theory, and organization theory.