the network idea

The economic and technical development during the past decade has led to increased cost pressure as well as a growing complexity of industrial plants. Development and maintenance of specialised know-how has become more and more costly. To deal with these facts, corporations have built networks of suppliers and system specialists. According to their needs, the large companies cooperate with these external partners to develop solutions together and profit from each other's know-how. This not only facilitates an efficient handling of peak work load periods, but also provides an assessment of problems from different points of view as well as a fast and flexible reaction to technological developments.

The success of a network depends on its size as well as on the interdisciplinary skills of its people. Preferably, participants have a different background such as industry, universities and research laboratories. This makes it possible to closely follow developments and trends in their early phases and make them available to the network partners. An important factor for the success of such an approach is the independence of the network members as well as complete trust amongst them. Such trust is built up through cooperation, a transparent information policy and the definition of clear rules for the exchange (or non-disclosure) of commonly developed skills and knowledge.

emkamatik sees itself as a part of such a network in the area of engineering including test systems for railways and industrial applications in Switzerland, Europe and worldwide. The main focus are areas which are either very specialised and, therefore, not within the core competence of rail vehicle manufacturers (such as the development of test systems and engineering tools). Other specialities include tasks which fall at the interfaces between the divisions of large manufacturers or railways, and can only be adquately dealt with by these companies by an unproportionally high effort.

With its services emkamatik is convinced it has the people and tools to contribute to the development of the electrical and railway industries.