Engineering staff are definitely getting harder to find in the UK, according to Mark Edwards at Huntingdon-based test and measurement manufacturer Thurlby Thandar (TTi).
The firm has recently taken on two overseas engineering students after a recruitment process which saw just five or six UK applicants out of a total of 60.
The firm has been manufacturing since 1979 when it emerged from a division of Sinclair and it has staff that have been with the firm for many years. “It is really a manual skill. People don’t want to do this kind of work anymore,” said Edwards.
While Edwards admits competing with the Far East is not easy, not least because of the increased prices of raw materials that we pay in Europe, the firm has a loyal customer base. One of the products that has driven this loyalty is the firm’s PL series of bench power supplies, which the firm has been selling succesfully since 1979. Now it has updated the range.
“Why were people still buying it after 29 years? We went to the customers and they said they trusted the technology and the brand,” said Edwards.
The new PL series has an analogue front end of dials but behind it a digital control, it also has an S-lock to transfer control of voltage and current from the analogue controls to the digital circuitry.
TTi has also made a 2.7GHz version of its handheld spectrum analyser which is based around a Palm PDA device and is for sale under £1,000. It is an update of the firm’s 1.3GHz spectrum analyser. It was “a product that can do EMC investigation for under £1,000 and was very well received”, said Edwards.
The other selling point, said Edwards is that engineers get a Palm device with all its other applications available.
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