project memo

TOOLING INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL INNOVATION

I. Global tooling system: structure and dynamics. Making sense of the structure and dynamics of the global business systems of tooling products.

We look at the global tooling industries in order to explore and to understand its structure and dynamics and its role in the development path of countries, through available statistical data. We try to create a coherent picture of the tooling sectors, its structure and its long term dynamics and to establish a set of statistics per country and per type of tooling product, and to exploit the changing mechanisms of demand and offer in the supply chain and within the business ecosystems of tooling dependent industries, namely in large countries with mature tooling industries.

A system based approach helps to organize a systematic analysis of the production, international trade and consumption of several kinds of tooling per country, and to identify the main actors and trends. We rely on a methodology based on system analysis and a systemic approach of relationships in the business ecosystems where tooling is important. Multivariate statistics and social network analysis tools are used, especially for complex data visualization. Different approaches are used to map the international trade and development paths of the tooling industries, as well as linkages in the industrial ecosystems.

Price trends for different types of tooling are also explored as signals of the competitive landscape.

Tooling activity can be explored as an advanced indicator for development in economic history. Metal based industries has been often considered as indicators of development (for instance, world systems theory). What can we learn from the co-evolution path of tooling industries and manufacturing in the most important countries (like USA, Japan, China, Germany)?

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II: Origins and consolidation of tooling industry in the context of development. Understanding the strange case of the evolutionary path of Portugal export driven tooling industry

Different kinds of tooling have developed different outsourcing practices and different international trade markets. Industrial moulds (and specially moulds for plastics) become an active traded product, and Portugal has emerged as an important supplier of advanced moulds for plastics in the world market. But Portugal had no tradition of mould or tool dependent manufacturing industry (no heavy industry, no automobile sector, no instruments industry), neither a significant tradition of metal-based exports. A sector based on small shops and individual entrepreneurs without formal education emerged as highly competitive in the world tooling market. Along last half century the sector transformed itself into a cluster of modern and knowledgeable mould shops relying on more formal engineering methods. What can we learn about the role of tooling activities in the development models of developing countries? How replicable is the Portuguese experience?

We explore the emergence of the sector in Portugal, its business demography and its genetics at the entrepreneurial level, from the roots during mid 40s (XXth century), based both on quantitative and qualitative data (oral history, narratives, including video taped deep semi structured interviews with different kinds of historic actors - entrepreneurs, mould makers, international buying agents, suppliers, …).

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III. Tooling and industrial innovation. Understanding the brokerage role of tooling industries in industrial innovation

Innovation in new products is highly dependent on tooling and through this tiny sector flows most of the industrial innovation about consumption and industrial products, as well as changes in industrial conforming processes. Availability of tooling has always constrained product development and time to market cycle times. Tooling bottlenecks are well known, especially in the metal and plastics sectors. But the tiny tooling companies do operate international brokerage networks that are key for the innovation diffusion in the industrial ecosystems.

Tooling industries are also in the middle of the complex interaction and competition between metal, plastics and new materials in the market of industrial and consumption products.

Tooling industries path came from highly personal dependent tacit skills to engineering, from craft to technology based and driven industry in a few decades. This is a sector struggling between personal tacit knowledge and explicit formal knowledge. An analysis based on Michael Polany epistemology can contribute to explore the process.

Click here for recent work about innovation and M. Polany philosophy.

0. Introduction

Tooling industries are a tiny sector in the global industrial ecosystem. In the mature USA market, tooling industries represent less than 0,1% of GDP – but manufacturing sectors dependent on tooling contribute with more than half of manufacturing value added. It is a tiny sector, bearing worldwide on dispersed and independent SMEs, that feeds the supply chain of the big industry (OEMs, …) with critical tools and knowledge.

But it is a sector usually not considered in the industry policy discussion and decision making, often not even mentioned in official statistics. Very few multinational corporate groups are active in the tooling business, and very few large companies operate in the sector, despite its keystone positioning. No systematic approach to the industry seems to be available until now.

Research team:

Professor Eduardo Beira (EDAM MIT Portugal, U. Minho)

with advice from

Professor Costa Leite (U. Aveiro)

Professor Chris Magee (MIT USA)