Test sticks with design in Europe
1 min read
You could do worse than be a test engineer in Europe these days says Anritsu EMEA's director of marketing Jonathan Borrill, who has watched the decline of electronics manufacturing in Europe whilst retaining belief that there is still a firm footing for design and test engineers.
Borrill observed: "In Asia, the industry is about manufacturing. If you are a production test engineer, you are at the heart of the nation's industry – at the heart of generating wealth – and you are doing the most important job. In Europe, production is not seen to be as important: R&D and design is far more glamorous and this is where the highest quality engineers all want to go to."
Increasingly, claims Borrill, test teams are in one global location. "It tends to be based around the design. Where the main design headquarters are tends to be where the main test development centre is. Any satellite design centres are testing their elements of design remotely on the main test system at the test headquarters."
This is all well and good – even assuming that we have given up on production in the UK, which you can see from the main Design+ article is far the truth – but it requires the design community to be healthy. Among the pockets of strength in Europe are aerospace/defence (for strategic reasons) and automotive, about which Borrill comments: "The lesson is to identify why this is a good business model and how can we apply it to other areas."
One area that Borrill believes could be key is in telecoms and the emerging 5G portfolio of services, but it will only reach its full potential with a centralised approach. "We want to make sure we entrench ourselves.
Europe had a strong position in 2G and 3G but we clearly lost the leadership position for 4G at many levels and people want to be back in at 5G. A more centralised European position will make us far stronger. If we look back, GSM was very successful; it was truly a European standardised technology, with the same frequency, the same technology and one policy across Europe. If we look at LTE, every country is implementing it differently – different frequencies, different licence terms, different timing. LTE has become fragmented and that is why the European position has been so much weaker. If we can come back to a single European context for 5G, it becomes a much stronger market."
Despite these areas of opportunity, Borrill concedes the T&M market in Europe is pretty flat, but added: "Supporting test development and virtual test centres is certainly a strength in Europe and a good positive trend we see in the market."
