South of the border, design is heading north

I have watched the growth of the electronics industry in Mexico for nearly a decade, and yet I am still surprised by my own findings about Mexico’s improving design capabilities.

The growing appeal of Mexico for electronics design is one of the main conclusions of my recent research, “Mexico’s Near-Shore Design Centers: A Growth Opportunity.” Mexico does not yet offer all of the design capabilities to be found in India or China, but this is often offset by Mexico’s many advantages.

Engineering design services in Mexico are provided at competitive costs, even compared to India and China; proximity to the U.S. enhances time to market; legal protections for IP are comparable to the U.S., and Mexican engineers typically have strong English skills. Mexican universities are graduating nearly 80,000 engineers a year; training is slowly catching up with that of the U.S., Europe or India, but there are promising signs of new collaboration between the universities and many electronics companies.

There are growing design centers in Guadalajara, Jalisco, the state of Chihuahua, and Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. Engineers are undertaking everything from design for manufacturing to software, hardware, PCB layout design and even in some cases chip design—both the hardware and the firmware. In the automotive sector, which is more advanced than others, some Mexican design centers been given ownership of complete designs.

In the past ten years, Mexico has become an important near-shore manufacturing location for OEMs and EMS companies. It is important not to underestimate Mexico as a design location with a lot of potential.

Read our research on this and let us know what you think.

Posted by Mariana Via-Urista, April 21st, 2007

Filed to Logistics