OSSA: New Synergy on Defence and Aerospace
The Defence and Aviation Clustering idea at Ostim has actually emerged after the study made with the International Competitiveness Research Institute (URAK) in 2007 to perceive that Ostim Organized Industrial Zone (Ostim OSB) is competitive at which sector and to what extent.This analysis has shown that Ostimincorporates sub-industry which is needed by defence and aviation industry in terms of machining, sheet forming, surface treating, electro mechanics, composite and cabling. The companies currently performing activities in these fields were delivering services to main industry companies located at Ankara. For this reason, we can say that a natural clustering was available at Ostim.
Today’s conditions and especially the conditions of defence and aviation industry have pushed us to be more strengthened together. For this reason, Ostim OSB, with the companies from all over Ankara and making the majority of their turnovers from activities delivering to defence and aviation industry, is a sound initiative which is supported by organizations and enterprises such as the Undersecretariat for Defence Industries (SSM), Ministry of Economy, Ankara Chamber of Industry, SaSaD, KOSGEB, Metutech and THK University. Our main objective under this umbrella is to propose local solutions to main integrators performing in defence and aviation industry as well as to make all efforts to increase the exportation of the SMEs in defence and aviation industry. We have realized and will continue to realize so many activities in this respect and some of which are to visit main industry companies of our country and introduce our companies to them; to increase the business volumes of the companies and to provide new opportunities to the companies that are not previously performing activities in this field. Besides our promotion activities are continuing and we are supporting the companies to participate at international fairs and make business meetings within the scope of International Competitiveness Enhancement Project of the Ministry of Economy. We are redirecting the demands which we received to cluster companies and we are bringing procurement authorities from foreign countries to Turkey. We are handling the training, consultancy and certification problems of the companies and working for them to go further in defence and aviation sector.
There are currently 107 member companies with over 2600 personnel under OSSA and we have the highest number of engineers amongst other Ostim clusters. We have several criteria for company applications or selections since the sector requires high engineering, low tolerance and high sensitivity. It is required that such company is currently working with a main industry company such as Aselsan, TAI, Roketsan, FNSS or is an approved supplier of them. The applicant should be a manufacturing company or delivering services to the sector in R&D, engineering and design fields. There are no criteria on company volume because especially at SME level, the capability cannot be assessed through volume or turnover. The applicants become OSSA members after the approval of the Board. This is critical for us since OSSA has become a brand in defence and aviation sub-industry and we always have to keep the high level of quality. There are companies performing in many fields from machining, sheet forming, surface treating, cabling to software and engineering. This diversification provides us higher capacity and capability and strengthens us for the promotion of Turkish Defence and Aviation sub-industry in foreign countries.
We have enjoyed the clustering incentives under the International Competitiveness Development Projectof Ministry of Economy. Currently at Ostim, 4 foreign trade projects are being carried out; two of which are under Machine and Machine Equipment Cluster, one is under Medical Cluster and the other is under Defence and Aviation Cluster. Only at OSSA, 24 companies have been benefiting from a budget amounting to 1.105.000 TL under the scope of this Project. Besides, the Ministry of Industry will initiate a new incentive program for clusters in the near future. We have exchanged views on such program with the Ministry officials.
Some of the companies under OSSA are currently performing export activities to many countries. However, a few of them have end-products due to the nature as well as challenges of this sector; therefore we cannot say their international competitiveness levels are that satisfactory. But when we consider that the global companies have component-based productions made in countries like Romania and Poland in European region, we confidently know that OSSA companies are making productions just as in high quality and standards of such countries. For this reason, OSSA will become competitive at international arena in the near future.
OSSA made great efforts for strengthening its international activitiesespecially during the last one year. We presented in details the Turkish defence industry and OSSA in many international fairs and workshops and received satisfactory returns. Foreign procurement authorities became aware of the sub-industry level in Turkey and the foreign demands that we received so far are the good examples for this. We can improve our exportation in three ways on the basis of SMEs. The most significant of them is “offset”, which is also highlighted persistently by the Undersecretariat for Defence Industries. We accept it as a prerequisite and the vision of SSM and especially the Undersecretary Murad Bayar gives us hope. As a matter of fact, such studies are being disseminated to other institutions and organizations. The other way is the promotion of sub-industry to be made by main industry companies at their
