Scottish electronics industry gets action plan for growthHarry YeatesA five-year plan to revitalise the Scottish electronics industry through re-skilling the workforce, supply chain development and R&D has been unveiled by industry leaders.
The move follows the damage done to the Scottish electronics industry through the loss of some 10,000 jobs in the sector this year.
“Our priority is to minimise the impact of the global downturn on Scotland, and take action now to build for the long term,” said Enterprise Minister Wendy Alexander.
The plan document explained that ‘there will be a shift in the balance of skills required, with a reduction in low skill, low value jobs, and an increase in the proportion of high skill, high value jobs.’
“Most countries that are involved in electronics manufacture are probably trying to do a similar thing,” Jane Richardson, chief executive of industry body Electronics Scotland, told Electronics Weekly. “I think the UK’s challenge is to make sure we’ve got the right people to do it.”
In the short term projects include £2.5m set aside by the Scottish Enterprise Network to re-skill 500 workers. Retraining work with Motorola, Compaq and other companies that have cut a total of around 10,000 this year is also ongoing.
“We’d be looking to move [assembly line workers] into technician roles in debug, diagnostic, test and repair,” explained Richardson, “and move people in technical roles up into engineering roles. It’s kind of shifting everyone up one level.”
To strengthen R&D, Scottish Enterprise’s Enterprise Fellowships programme – which has created seven spin-out companies and 420 jobs since its launch in 1997 – will be extended, and will sponsor three fellows each year for the next five years.
Scottish Enterprise has also committed over £30m to electronics for the next two years, including £27m for high value areas such as optoelectronics, microelectronics and comms technology.
“We called everyone together [for an industry summit] in June and set a deadline of October to get the roadmap put out,” said Richardson. “This is the beginning of something, not the end. It’s not a glossy document, it’s an actual action plan.”