PCB Design, Electronic Design, Printed circuit boards, PCB Layout

Government targets low-carbon R&D with £40m fund

The Government-backed Technology Strategy Board has announced that £39.5m will be available for companies doing R&D in areas such as low-carbon and nano technologies.

There are likely to be opportunities for electronics companies working in the areas of low-carbon technologies, medical and transport systems.

Blog by Tiffany Bate

Carbon Neutral

With increasing concerns about our planet and what we have already done to it, nobody can underestimate the importance of reigning in the electricity consumption levels.

Italy & Scandinavia have seen success with roll out of ZigBee based systems for remote maintenance of electricity meters. Commercial and domestic sites in Europe are now looking at the same system.

British Government have set ambitious targets to move towards a carbon neutral state, with reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to a figure that is 12.5% below its level in 1990 by the start of 2012.

Do you think these figures are achievable? Will following Italy & Scandinavia help achieve these targets?

Quantum Makes Big Hires to Increase Work in the UK Market

As many companies suffer from financial problems, Quantum CAD makes great efforts by hiring market specialists from the USA and Europe to bring more business to the UK.

MD Steve Jones has seen the success of an internationally diverse company and continues to cross all borders to ensure company growth. Recently, added was Sales and Marketing Manager Heather Norbury (American) and Electronics Designer Zbyszek Ciszek, from Poland. Both were highly recruited from strong professional and educational backgrounds.

Heather Norbury, a master’s graduate from Baylor University (Texas) and Swansea University, joins as the Sales and Marketing Manager. She brings with her a strong mix of knowledge from her academic and management expertise from Fortune 500 companies based in the US. Quantum CAD has seen the benefits of adding international employees, as previous Sales and Marketing Manager, Anna Bastek, Polish National, helped increase turnover over 100% in the last three years. Expanding recruitment internationally proves that knowledge based SME's in the UK can benefit from the global community. Heather brings a wealth of US market knowledge which has already increased their international business.

Zbyszek Ciszek expands the design team as an Electronics Designer for Quantum. He brings great knowledge of the European market as he holds an undergraduate degree from The Silesian University of Technology. There he gained experience with electronics and telecommunication. To gain additional IT skills, Zbyszek has attended the University of Wales. This also increased his knowledge on the UK culture and customs.

Years of experience in the fast moving and continually changing electronics design environment has enabled Quantum CAD to develop a customer focused approach to PCB design services. Heather Norbury and Zbyszek Ciszek will create more opportunities to bring in an increased level of international customers creating more revenue and work for the UK economy.

Events in 2009

The difficult economic conditions mean that some of the larger players, such as Samsung, did not attend CeBit this year. Have you had to make such cut backs? Which events are you thinking of attending this year?

Blog Article by Tiffany Bate

UK Electric Vehicle Leader

The UK government has a £20M initiative promoting green motoring in the public sector by aiming to boost production of electric and low carbon vans as part of a strategy to promote green motoring in the public sector.

Councils in Liverpool, and Gateshead, Newcastle, Coventry, Leeds and Glasgow, London have been selected for the first phase, along with public sector organisations such as the Royal Mail, Metropolitan Police and transport for .

Ford, Mercedes Benz, Citroen, Ashwoods, Land Rover, Modec, Smith Electric Vehicles, LDV, Nissan, Allied Vehicles have all been short listed as the top ten manufactures.

Linux Rescue Plan for Motorola

Motorola has lost ground in the handset market up against such giants as Nokia, Samsung and Apple. Motorola has now confirmed they will be fighting back by going in to competition with Apple and Blackberry with a new range of multimedia smartphones. It looks certain that Linux-based open source platforms will put competitive pressure on the proprietary mobile operating systems of Microsoft and Apple.

 

Do you think Motorola and Linux can take on Apple and Microsoft? Let us know what you think.

Designers to become Green

With growing concerns over global warming and the pressure from the need to stop waste electrical and electronic products going to landfills, pressure is mounting for designers to think about the environment.

Are you feeling the pressure? Do you feel that there is a need to be “green”? Let us know what you think.

Check how green your products are with the LCA Calculator

For more hints, tips and downloads please click here

China's prices going up

Due to the turmoil of the world's financial markets, the cost of China's manufacturing services has virtually gone unnoticed.

It was a belief that the price different for production from the east to the west would go on for many years, but due to the changes in the worlds economies in the past few months it is apparent that China could become a more expensive place to make electronic goods in the future.

This price increase has already started with the raising costs in fuel. The cost of transporting products from China to Europe or the US has doubled in the recent years.
Inflation in China is now running at higher than 5% which is putting presser on wages and the Chinese government has been putting in laws for Chinese workers regarding minimum wage.

As the cost of production continues to rise, much production was already left China. There are signs that due to the recent economic changes some firms have revisited the benefits of having a European production base.

Reference: Electronics Weekly