Manufacture In Scotland Today Essays - Economy Of Scotland

Manufacture In Scotland Today Manufacture In Scotland Today Contents Contents page Page 1 Introduction Page 2 Electronics Page 3 Semiconductors Page 5 Aerospace Page 6 Automotive Page 7 Conclusion Page 8 References Page 9 "Manufacturing In Scotland Today" Introduction This report is not so much on the state of the manufacturing industry in Scotland but rather of it's current success. Scottish productivity consistently ranks among the highest worldwide and multinational companies have expanded their presence in Scotland to capitalise on this. Due to the extent of the manufacturing industry in Scotland I am going to focus on four areas these being: Electronics, Semiconductors, Aerospace and Automotive manufacture. Other major areas of manufacture in Scotland include Biotechnology (which I will touch upon later), Food (with annual sales totalling 7.3 billion) and Textiles. Scotland is the home to around 550 electronics companies including multinational giants such as IBM, Compaq, Motorola, Matsushita and Phillips. Scotland also has one of the highest concentrations of semiconductor fabrication companies in Europe including NEC, Motorola, National Semiconductors and Raytheon Systems. While the Scottish aerospace industry comprises of 52 companies including BAE Aerostructures, GEC Marconi Radar and Control Systems, Greenwich Caledonian, Rohr, Bond Helicopters and Woodward Governor and it has world-class expertise in electronics, plastics and aluminium founding, all of which are increasingly important in automotive manufacture. All these companies chose Scotland. Home to Europe's most experienced electronics work-force the Scots are known worldwide for their work ethic, as well as for their skills and initiative they are praised for low turnover rates, low absenteeism, and high levels of responsiveness to training and new technologies. Partly this can be put down to Scotland's educational system which places particular emphasis on electrical engineering, science, mathematics and computer-related studies. Also producing more engineering graduates per capita than all other EU nations. Scotland also offers the ideal location for companies requiring access to the European market through access to Europe in a matter of hours with it's modern airports, motorways, deep water seaports and advanced rail freight connections with Europe. Electronics The so called Silicon Glen area of Central Scotland is one of the most concentrated areas of electronics activity in Europe. Home to many companies from America, Japan, as well as European multi-nationals and of course independent Scottish companies. Many leading electronics companies have operations in Scotland, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Canon, Compaq, Packard Bell, NEC, Sun Microsystems and Mitsubishi. Altogether they employ 41,000 people, with another 29,900 supporting directly. Total product sales of the Scottish electronics sector amounted to 15.5 billion in 1996 with Scotland producing: ? 32% of personal computers made in Europe, ? more than 7% of the world's PCs, ? 80% of Europe's workstations, ? 29% of Europe's notebooks and ? 65% of Europe's automated banking machines. Optoelectronics Electrical and optical engineering is Scotland's largest manufacturing area representing 23% of the countries total manufacturing. Scotland is a world leader in optoelectronics with the likes of Pilkington Optronics a major developer in military optical systems including periscopes, military laser range finders and thermal imaging systems. GEC Marconi avionics also use their military expertise in laser targeting and guidance systems. Edinburgh Instruments manufacture all kinds of state of the art lasers. VLSI Vision have developed a new single-chip video camera which is being used used in security systems, medical and automotive products not to mention personal computers and children's toys. Microlase also develop lasers for use in biotechnology and semiconductor research. Telecommunications Scotland is home to four of the worlds top ten telecommunications companies including Motorola, Cisco, Lucent and 3Com. Motorola a world leader in portable communications systems operates from Scotland manufacturing a wide range of products, including mobile phones, for the European market. Hewlett-Packard also who have been operating a plant in Scotland for over 30 years where they manufacture products for testing telecommunications systems. Information Systems Scotland has been at the forefront of the global information systems industry for over 40 years with leading companies like NCR, Honeywell and IBM all of which take advantage of the countries solid support infrastructure and communications links to serve the markets of Europe and beyond. Scotland produces Personal computers, including desktop and laptop models. Processing systems, such as electronic funds transfer and automatic teller machines. Peripherals, including display monitors, keyboards, printers and data communication products. Support products, such as disk drives, cable harnesses and switched-mode supplies. Also the Scottish software industry has a turnover of 1.5 billion and employs around 20,000 people. Semiconductors Scotland's semiconductor fabrication plants employ over 5,500 people, and suppliers to the semiconductor industry employ 2,700. Scotland has a 7% share of the EMEA semiconductor production capacity and a 33% share of the UK capacity. Companies choose to locate in Scotland as it is home to the UK's National Microelectronics Institute which tackles any problems that companies from throughout the UK may have. Whilst providing training and the