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Published on February 12, 2008

Tesa president Apinetr Unakul said that driving the embedded-system industry to generate solid revenue required a strong plan to guide developments across segments built around embedded systems.

The two main problems in Thailand's embedded-system industry are the market and personnel, and the plan is therefore designed to tackle these areas.

For marketing, it includes three strategies - finding outsourcing jobs, creating local niche markets and developing star products for export. These strategies will begin this year and continue to 2020.

Thailand is in the first two stages, as the majority of revenue in the embedded-system industry comes from outsourcing and a few local niche markets.

Outsourcing is a basic shift for the local embedded-system industry, especially in the automobile and electronics industries. Tesa has collaborated with Japanese companies such as Toyota to train people to serve the massive skill requirements in this field.

Potential local markets with demand for embedded-system technology are agriculture and electronics.

The plan is expected to create about 500 local niche markets by 2010, increasing to 2,000 in 2015 and ending up with 5,000 in 2020.

The association aims to drive the industry to be recognised through star products by 2010, with 100 products in the global market. Its goal is then to have more star products over the next 10 years - 1,000 in 2015 and ideally 50,000 in 2020.

Meanwhile, to tackle the staffing problems, the association aims to train more people in three main categories - architecture and specialists, designers and programmers.

The industry needs a large number of programmers and it expects to have about 1,000 in 2010, rising to 2,000 in 2015 and 4,000 in 2020. Further steps in training are to create a large number of designers and eventually architects and specialists. The plan is to develop 50 designers in 2010, 200 designers by 2015 and 800 by 2020.

Meanwhile, it expects to have embedded-system architects and specialists numbering about 50 in 2010, before moving to 200 in 2015 and 800 in 2020.

Along with the two development tracks, the association has collaborated with both industry and educational institutions "to build the right man to serve the right job for the right demand".

"To develop designers we worked with partners through the Estate scheme. Fifteen people have been training in Japan with Japanese support of Bt3 million each," said Apinetr.

Apart from building three categories, the association will train lower-skilled people - coders and testers - through collaboration with vocational schools.

In the next three years, about 4,000 to 5,000 people per year will be needed. Now the country can produce around 1,000 annually. Meanwhile, Japan needs 70,000 embedded-system staff per year.

"There is a huge demand for trained people and this is an opportunity for Thailand to develop the skilled staff to serve this market," said Apinetr.

To make the plan practical, Tesa will work with the Science and Technology Ministry and the Industry Ministry to provide knowledge, research and development, training, consulting, products such as intellectual property and prototypes, as well as developing business in both pilot and purchased products.

Meanwhile, other support includes incubation, funding and loans, as well as clustering and networking.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation