Electronics Systems - Challenges and Opportunities

The UK trade association for electronics systems, microelectronics and semiconductors, NMI, has been tasked by the government with providing a strategic report on the UK electronics systems community and barriers to future growth. I participated in one of the regional workshops that will feed into the report and found out more about this key initiative.

The Manchester workshop was one of a series events hosted across the UK and which will inform the ESCO report that is scheduled for publication in September 2012. Inspired in part by a successful reinvigoration of the UK automotive industry, the team behind the report are keen to ensure that it gains full government backing and contributes to real market growth. 

Part of the fabric of industry at large

At the start of the event the scene was set via a broad strokes assessment of the UK electronics systems (ES) community, and overall a very positive picture was painted. For example:

• Electronics systems are a vital part of many vertical industries, e.g. automotive, telecommunications and healthcare.

• … but since these industries are not classified as electronics their contribution may not be apparent and it's difficult to measure the true size of the overall community.

• Some of the larger UK electronics companies may no longer be around, however these have been replaced by many more smaller businesses.

• It was calculated in 2006 that ES accounted for 2% of UK GDP.

We were also given a sneak preview of the preliminary figures for an up to date economic analysis which will be published as part of the report, and let's just say that the indication is that there has been significant growth since 2006!

Challenges and opportunities

Following the introduction and economic overview we spent some time discussing UK business in the context of the ES lifecycle, manufacturing, supply chain and R&D. And in closing considered how these interests may best be represented. The challenges discussed were varied and included:

• Relatively high cost of developing specialist parts in the UK.

• Fall in university intake of electronic engineering students.

• Poor awareness of ES by public and politicians.

Many of these were also seen opportunities, e.g. a growing demand for skilled resource due to the decline in university intake could be addressed by measures that also serve to tackle high youth unemployment. And the issue concerning poor awareness by the public and politicians was one that seemed to resonate with most, and appeared to be closely related to many other challenges faced.

I look forward to seeing the final report upon its publication and it will be interesting to see what action this results in. And in the meantime if you have not been able to attend any of the workshops and you would like to contribute your own perspectives you can contact the working group.