Essential Contributions of Academic Engineers to Regional Industrial Clusters Categorized into Machine and Metal Processing

Abstract

Industrial cluster formation is still recognized as an effective passage for advancing regional economy. However, particularly in Japan, not a few efforts to form new industrial clusters are recognized as being unsuccessful. The author considers there might be lack of consensus building process, then analyzed the records of a certain city council in recent eight years, where the cluster formation activities related to an aviation industry continue. In this paper, the particularity of the industry is outlined at first, then insufficient debate in the council is shown as a result with little existence of innovations created by the residents in same time, and we discuss the essential contributions and responsibilities which engineers at academic sector as regional members should execute, specifically for high-tech industrial cluster formation in a region. In the end the problem of engineering education in the higher education institutes is mentioned.