| The Netherlands offers an attractive location for IT
and related businesses such as micro electronics, telecommunications,
office automation and software technology. It is the cradle of Electronics
multinational Philips, which has it’s headquarters as well as
it’s main research laboratories in the Netherlands. Although
the majority of Philips factories are moved to overseas locations,
several are still located in the Netherlands.
Besides Philips, another group of industries driving Dutch knowledge
and experience with electronics is the space and aircraft industry.
A very strong cluster of parts, components and system developers
and manufacturers is located in the Netherlands supplying state
of the art components and systems to the worlds leading aerospace
industries.
These Dutch industries are surrounded with a large number of specialized
companies that manufacture metal and plastics parts and sub-systems.
Other industries, which have a high electronics content, are the
copier and automotive industry.
These industries are supplied with highly educated technicians
from the Netherlands main technical universities, in Delft, Eindhoven
and Enschede. Besides these Universities, there are Higher technical
vocational schools (bachelor degree) in every major city, as well
as medium and lower technical schools.
The Netherlands attracted many operations of electronics hardware
manufacturers, from Taiwan, the US and Japan. One of the reasons
for these companies to set up their operations in the Netherlands,
is the ‘electronics-environment’. People are familiar
with the electronics industry. Workers are educated and have ‘generations’
of experience in the industry. Schools and Universities offer courses
and do research in various directions regarding electronics.
Another reason for these companies to locate in the Netherlands
of course is that this right industrial environment can be found
in the center of the European market, close to efficient harbors
and airports, offering easy access, either from Asia or the US.
The Netherlands also offers easy access to the main European markets
due to it’s large and developed logistics industry. Beside
shipping goods, equally important is the receiving goods returned
from the customer for service or repair. For all these logistic
flows time is most important, faster deliveries mean more sales,
lower risk and lower stock.
The combination of environments, electronics and logistics, in
the Netherlands is unique in Europe. Already many companies from
Taiwan; ADI, Quanta, Tatung, from US; Compaq, Hewlett Packard, IBM,
Texas Instruments and from Japan; Canon, Yokogawa have discovered
these merits. |
