We all stand together

The Netherlands Aerospace Group (NAG) is the national trade association encompassing aerospace companies and organisations engaged in education, R&D, engineering, manufacturing and MRO of civil and military systems and equipment.

By supporting its members in developing business globally and organising national pavilions at major airshows and conferences, the NAG acts as a national point of contact for international customers looking for suppliers and partners in the Netherlands. Furthermore, it lobbies within the Dutch government, organises international trade missions and matchmaking events and actively scans the global market for business opportunities.

The NAG also organises courses, seminars and meetings about specific areas of interest as well as hosting the Netherlands Information Centre for Aerospace (NICA) to provide a wide range of information to members focused on SME needs. Furthermore, it represents the members within all relevant national and international forums by analysing and protecting its members' interests.

“The association is seen as an important function in supporting the competitiveness of its members,” begins the NAG's director, Frank Jansen. “It is our members that fund the NAG so they expect us to help them enhance their competitive position - particularly abroad as around 80% of our aerospace market is located outside the Netherlands.”
Jansen offers that there are two ways to increase its members' competitiveness: “Firstly, we try to enhance their knowledge in many different ways,” he continues. “Whilst there are already many institutes relating to technical knowledge, there are many other areas in which we play an important role by providing courses and creating individual clusters around certain items, subjects and markets.

“Secondly, there is the need to help them raise their visibility in the market, so every month we spend some time overseas talking to the international market and trying to establish a foothold for our member companies.”

All join forces

One of the NAG's main thrusts has been in creating combinations of companies, a change forced on them by developments in the market whereby large OEMs are looking to rationalise their supply chains.

“This forces companies to provide ‘innovation in organisation',” Jansen continues, “a function that is already well developed within the NAG, whereby we are able to bring companies together – even those that consider each other as competitors – and find a way to make them realise that their market opportunities can be enhanced if they join forces instead of trying to compete against each other.”

Jansen notes that one of the unexpected outcomes of persuading member companies to collaborate and work closer together is how they have been able to learn from each other.

“Some of them have met each other during trade missions overseas and discovered that they are located only a few miles apart and that both have information and knowledge that is mutually very beneficial,” he explains. “In many cases, it appears that the knowledge required by one company is accessible via another. By bringing them together, it's very easy for them to obtain a higher degree of knowledge.”

Although the Netherlands' labour rates have never been a major ingredient of its competitive global position, to survive, its aerospace industry needs to continuously innovate and focus itself on key areas of interest.

“The Netherlands has a long heritage as an integrator of aerospace manufacturing, but our main knowledge is at the system level,” he observes. “In terms of being a supplier to the global aerospace industry, our country concentrates on aerostructures and applying new material technologies. The application of new materials is one of the main competitive advantages of maintaining the Dutch cluster in the supply chain.”

Jansen says that at present, the NAG is using its time wisely to gain innovation within the sector and come out of the current recession in a better and more enhanced position of technology and innovation than when it entered it. “This is also one of the main concerns of the NAG; we help support companies so that they remain visible in the market and that they keep, and increase, their R&D activities in order to obtain an improved position,” he adds.

And asked how the cluster intends to respond to OEMs' demand signals for new and advanced technologies and the need to narrow the skills gap, Jansen is forthright in his opinion: “There is simply no alternative option because your customers will realise very quickly if you do not keep pace with the highest standards of engineering. Overseas competition for work is very intense, but with Delft being one of the largest technical aerospace universities in Europe, we have the basis for creating high levels of skilled personnel among some of our younger engineering students. Continuous training is an all important pre-requisite, otherwise it will be impossible to keep up with the competition.”

www.nag.aero