ATC is the cluster organization that stimulates innovation and cooperation in the Dutch automotive sector in order to strengthen the international technology and business position of the Dutch automotive sector and grow and preserve this important industry and its spin-offs within the Netherlands.

 

Target groups and stakeholders:

ATC executes this by the Innomotive program as well as additional programs and services.

 

The ATC Innomotive program is built on three pillars:

 

1 Reinforcement:       

- Double the ATC cluster

- More active involvement of cluster members

- Knowhow transfer

- Promotion of the Dutch Automotive Sector

 

2 Cluster Deep Dive: 
- Development of thematic sub clusters
- Set up of open innovation platforms

Implementation of new business models

 

3 Internationalization:

- Euregional cluster projects

- International innovation visits and match making events

 

Flanders’ DRIVE is the innovation excellence pool and platform for the Flemish vehicle industry.

 

Flanders’ DRIVE aims at strategically strengthening the product development capacity of the vehicle supplier industry in Flanders. By this means, the supplier industry will stand stronger facing up to the competition on a European and global level.

 

This is of great importance as the vehicle supplier industry is facing enormous challenges: more product responsibility, shorter development cycles and more complex product development.

 

Flanders’ DRIVE supports the vehicle suppliers with know-how through the Flanders’ DRIVE Network on the one hand, and infrastructure through the Flanders’ DRIVE Research Centre on the other.

 

Flanders’ DRIVE was founded by Bekaert, Bosal, LMS International and Tenneco Automotive, and is supported by Agoria Vlaanderen, the federation of the technology industry in Belgium.

NoAE is a free, open initiative for the automobile and supplier industry. NoAE is an inter company professional network with the objective to intensify strategic organizational and technological exchanges of ideas and experiences between the companies. To increase the competitiveness of the participating companies through co-operation within the network.

 

The work of NoAE should aid members in revealing their trend-setting company strategies and should thereby guide them. This will be realised through:

In order to accomplish this, trust, transparency and understanding are the significant factors of success for NoAE and the participating companies.

 

NoAE was founded in 2002 by well-known personalities of the automotive branch and with the collaboration of the European Commission.

 

NoAE is an interregional automotive partner of "Initiative Networks of Competence Germany" by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

The automotive industry faces stiff international competition and is therefore subject to enforced structural change, which also necessitates restructuring and repositioning of the component suppliers. Integration in development tasks, continuous innovation and co-operation in a combined network are also becoming increasingly essential for automotive component suppliers, if they are to survive the competition. The Bavarian state government is taking the offensive in this situation and has set up the "Bavarian Innovation and Co-operation Initiative for the Automotive Components Industry".

 

In co-operation with the car manufacturers and component suppliers, the government intends to concentrate resources and activate previously unused potential. The initiative has the following goals:

 

The preliminary working group appointed by the Bavarian Ministry for Economic Affairs, Transport and Technology to set up the initiative determined co-operation, qualification and information rationalization as the most important fields of action and has already prepared initial proposals for concrete measures. The co-ordination of the project initiative has been delegated to Bayern Innovativ GmbH. Its main task will be to generate project ideas in the priority fields of action together with the interested component suppliers and to co-ordinate and manage the resulting firm projects. The initiative can therefore only be successful if the companies approached participate actively and utilize the opportunities offered.

 

Before a car moves, a joint effort is needed by many people to get things going. Individual suppliers become co-operation partners. The automotive industry needs systems beyond conventional technologies and branch patterns. BAIKA moderates a process that also makes small and medium-sized enterprises in the components industry fit for the requirements of the future. Comprehensive thinking is called for ranging from project management and cross-company communication and co-operation through to complete system development.

 

About 255 partners (as per December 31st, 2007) are members of the Automotive Cluster (AC), the biggest network in the automotive supplier industry in Austria. Since 1998, the Automotive-Cluster is working with manufacturing and service companies as well as research & development facilities in the area of street-bound vehicles (passenger cars, trucks, special vehicles, motorcycles).

 

Cooperation projects were successfully initiated and supported for the following topics (abstract):

Ongoing projects address the following topics:

The immediate geographical neighborhood to the booming automobile production locations in Eastern Europe and good contacts to the relevant players - these are the aces held by ACVR during its work for the automobile supplier enterprises of the Vienna Region.

 

As a network for innovative enterprises and trend-setting technologies in the automobile supplier segment, the overriding objective of the ACVR activities is to concentrate automotive expertise in the Vienna Region and to initiate innovative projects, in order to increase the competitive ability, the R&D quota, the value creation and innovation level of the partner enterprises. Special emphasis is thereby placed on networking of science and business, in order for instance to draw the attention of enterprises to research possibilities and to ensure at the earliest point in time the greatest possible practice relevance of innovations.

 

ACVR also specifically includes the CENTROPE region into its work in terms of Central European development and due to the booming automobile sector in the neighboring countries Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Hungary. Since nearly 5 percent of car production worldwide is already located within a radius of 300 kilometers of Vienna, closest superregional co-operation with automobile manufacturers, Tier 1 suppliers, and organizations in the automotive environment in these countries should help to sustain the Vienna Region location and to establish new jobs here.

 

Located in Graz/Austria the Virtual Vehicle Research and Test Centre has positioned itself as an independent, international platform for research and development in the automotive industry. It addresses the gap between academic research and the needs of industrial research and development departments. The cooperation network comprises over 45 international industry partners including leading OEM's, tier 1+2 suppliers and software vendors (e.g. Audi, AVL, BMW, MAN, MAGNA Steyr, Porsche, Siemens) and more than 35 university institutes world-wide.

 

Research focuses on the development of new technologies, methods and tools concerning the full-vehicle system and strives for multi-disciplinary optimization with an integrated engineering approach to exploit the full optimization potential in all areas of vehicle development. Fields of research include:

 

1)             System Design & Optimisation

2)             Thermodynamics

3)             NVH & Friction

4)             Vehicle Safety and Dynamics

5)             Vehicle E/E & Software

 

Virtual Vehicle also carries out sophisticated, industry related testing and measurement over the whole research spectrum by a V-approach - from complex systems down to partial subsystems to single components. VIRTUAL VEHICLE is a Research Center of COMET K2 Forschungs-förderungsprogramm - Funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT), the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour (BMWA), Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft mbH (FFG), Das Land Steiermark, and Steirische Wirtschaftsförderung (SFG).

 

The VIRTUAL VEHICLE is an international recognized research center for full vehicle system optimisation that combines simulation and testing. We build a sustainable and durable bridge between Science and Industry. Fast transition of basic research into industrial application creates competitive advantage for our clients and partners. As a crosspoint of the Styrian R&D network and international research partners, we offer Post-Graduates and High Potentials a state-of-industry work environment Technology 2020: ViF investigates and develops essential new technologies, which will be implemented in future automotive and drivetrain concepts. Spearheading the research topics in the field of Thermodynamics, NVH & Friction, Mechanics (Integrated Safety, Vehicle Dynamics, Material Modelling) and Vehicle E/E & Software – tailored to the requirements for multi-disciplinary optimisation of the full vehicle system and new drivetrain concepts.

 

Our main mission is to develop R&D projects which target:

In order to achieve this aim, Mov’eo’s members, who collectively represent over two thirds of France’s total public and private R&D resources in the automobile and collective transport industry, need to generate 150 M€ worth of projects per year over the next three years.

 

Our second mission consists in contributing to regional development.

 

Mov’eo, which was created by the merger of two clusters of competitiveness "Normandy Motor Valley" and "Vestapolis". In our area Normandy and Paris Regions, we need to create and reinforce meeting points and conditions favouring the synergy of skills for creativity. Within three years, we plan to integrate several thousand researchers into Mov’eo’s clusters.

 

Centro Ricerche Fiat S.C.p.A. (CRF) was founded in 1976 as the Fiat Group’s major source of expertise in innovation, research and development. It was established as a Società Consortile per Azioni, a consortium, whose shareholders are Group companies. CRF’s objective is to use innovation as a strategic lever and to enhance the results of its work through the promotion, development and transfer of innovative content able to make products distinctive and competitive. It is therefore able to play an active role in the technological growth of the Fiat Group, its partners and the community in areas such as powertrain, in collaboration with Fiat Powertain Technologies, vehicles and components, safe and environmentally-friendly mobility, telematics, new materials and relative technologies, mechatronics and optics, energy.

 

Moreover, CRF is particularly active in the field of research into sustainable mobility, adopting a systematic approach to investigate innovative solutions which address all aspects of sustainability in transport which include reducing emissions and noise pollution through innovations on the powertrain, but also increasing fuel efficiency by reducing vehicle weight, improving the aerodynamics, optimising the different sub-systems, developing eco-compatible production processes, identifying ecological and recyclable materials, and using communications and info-mobility to help reduce traffic congestion. The aim is obtain vheicles safer, greener and more comfortable, where greener means ecological during the whole cycle of life: production, use, end of life.

Founded in 1993 in the Basque Country, ACICAE is a non-profit making business association with the mission to improve competitive levels in the region’s automotive industry.

 

One of the first ever clusters in Europe, ACICAE was launched with the support of the Basque Government following Professor Michael Porter’s methodology. Since then it has evolved rapidly and is one of the major reasons why earnings in the Basque automotive industry have multiplied four-fold in the last fifteen years to ten thousand million euros.

 

ACICAE’s main objectives are to:

To this end, ACICAE facilitates:

 

SAFER Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers is a joint research unit using competence from 22 partners from the academy, society and the industry. Our vision is to enable Sweden to reach world leading competitiveness, and to provide new countermeasures to considerably reduce both the number of traffic accidents and the number of fatalities and serious injuries.

 

Research at SAFER spans a broad base, covering several disciplines and encompassing both traffic and vehicle safety in real environments. The centre’s activities engage the very elite in the field of traffic safety, and the results contribute to increasing the competitive advantages of the centre’s partner companies and organizations.

 

Chalmers University of Technology hosts the centre. By using the multidisciplinary scientific competence available within the Centre, we will make it a hub for excellence within the field of vehicle safety.

 

Our vision is to enable Sweden to reach world leading competitiveness, by:

At the heart of the formation of European Automotive Strategy Network (EASN, a pan-European Automotive Regions platform), are 5 EU funded projects:

 

1)       Automotive Regions

2)       Network of European Automotive Competence (funded from Structural Funds)

3)       Transnational Clustering in the Automotive Sector

4)       BeLCAR (funded from INNOVA, FP6) 

5)       I-CAR-O (funded from Article 6, ESF)

 

EASN is a strategic, long term, initiative. It will develop a European Platform to support the development of Automotive Cluster policy across Europe, and will also reach out to prospective new EU members. EASN will offer broad support for the creation of added value from cross-regional co-operation in Cluster Management and support of Automotive Companies, with specific emphasis on SMEs.

 

It picks up a number of key recommendations from the 2005 CARS21 High Level Group report on the future policy framework for a competitive EU industry. The EASN's objectives are fully in line with the CARS21 report and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Agendas.

 

The main aims of EASN are to support the Automotive Industry in the EU by:

The main themes through which EASN will achieve its aims are: