You are a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) employing 25 people and specialising in, say, manufacturing small electronics components. How do you begin to win your way on to a major aerospace programme via a tier-one partner? For some SMEs in the north-west of Italy, one solution is to pool competencies with like-minded local companies to jointly bid for contracts – so competing on a level footing with much bigger suppliers.

Turin-based Torino Piemonte Aerospace – a regional cluster funded by the local Piemonte government and chambers of commerce – is helping family firms to punch above their weight in this way by setting them up in specialist ad hoc consortia. The area’s dominant industry is automotive, but Piemonte is also home to major aerospace players such as Avio Aero, Selex ES, Thales Alenia Space and Alenia Aermacchi – as well as 280 SMEs.

Turin Piemonte Aerospace executives believe their organisation is ahead of other aerospace clusters in Italy because of the sophisticated way it supports these ad hoc consortia, which it calls “aggregations”. Before being proposed for an aggregation, SMEs are vetted. “Our selection criteria are very rigid and transparent, and very objective. They are based on a Six Sigma approach that encourages excluded companies to improve,” says Diana Giorgini, aerospace industry manager.

The mini-clusters, which comprise 10 to 20 firms, are bound by non-disclosure terms and a network agreement that sets out “rights and duties”, and one of the members acts as team leader. The groups can decide to bid directly for work packages with larger manufacturers or cooperate on more speculative projects in areas such as avionics, interiors and propulsion. In these instances, the mini-clusters are often supported by academics from the Polytechnic University of Turin.

Some 10 Piemonte companies are currently working with Avio and ThalesAleniaSpace on a project to create a tool for certificating additive layer manufacturing products for satellites. Another grouping – which goes under the name LISA (Leading Italian Style for Aircraft) – consists of 17 companies in the cabin interiors field. TPS Aerospace Engineering is leading another group of six companies working on a project to design a lighter-than-air airship powered by thrust-vectoring electric engines.

One of the most successful mini-clusters is Aencom (short for Aero Engine Components), 13 businesses specialising in manufacturing a wide range of parts, from brackets, pumps and manifolds to gearbox components, and offering “fully integrated solutions from design to full-rate production”. Just before June’s Paris air show, Aencom won a breakthrough contract from Avio Aero to develop a prototype low-pressure turbine by the end of the year.

Each member has a clear area of responsibility, with the cluster leader acting as prime contractor, explains Aencom’s Andrea Romiti. “It is all fully transparent,” he says. Every company had to undergo a risk assessment and some items are double-sourced to mitigate risk. However, “we are treated like 13 sites of the same group”, he says. “It turns us into a tier one, with 900 people and €140 million [$160 million] turnover. Avio have put their trust behind this approach.”

Torino Piemonte Aerospace members have also had success beyond Italy thanks to promotional efforts in China and air shows around the world. “People say, ‘How do you get these contacts with [Chinese manufacturer] AVIC?’,” says Stefania Andresciani, Torino Piemonte Aerospace’s China business consultant, a Chinese-speaker. “It comes through a lot of effort to get the trust of AVIC. We have been working on that relationship since 2009, and we have the right approach culturally, too.”

Since 2008, the organisation has also hosted biennial aerospace and defence conventions in Turin to bring SMEs and tier-ones together – the next one is on 17-20 November and will have a focus on additive layer manufacturing. According to Giorgini, support at a regional level is an effective way to help SMEs promote themselves and achieve critical mass in a global industry. She remarks: “The best part of our job is watching these companies grow.”

Source: Flight International