Continuing education for small and medium-sized industries: the French JESSICA programme

This paper presents a French public programme set up in order to assist small and medium-sized industries that are willing to implement ASICs or new electronic technologies in their products. After the presentation of the general frame of this programme, the specific actions will be detailed: SMIs awareness to new technologies, and specialised training sessions in microelectronics that were defined and realised for SMIs. We will then give quantitative results of the action and the characteristics of the SMIs that were provided help via JESSICA. Thanks to the positive results obtained by the programme over the last five years, JESSICA is likely to continue its action for a new period of four years, 1. The framework of JESSICA Within the framework of the EUREKA JIESSI (Joint European Submicron Silicon) Project “Small and Medium-sized Industries Support” -called SMI Supporta very efficient support network was created throughout Europe in order to facilitate the implementation of modern micro-electronics technology in SMIs. JESSICA (JESSI ASIC design in French) is the French ‘designation for the JESSI SMI Support. This programme has been in operation for more than five years. JESSICA is a governmental programme mainly financed by the Ministry of Industry, with an annual budget of approximately five million dollars. About twenty public support and competence centres provide awareness sessions and training programmes and also help individual SMIs with advice, feasibility studies and design, prototyping and testing services. JESSICA offers these services to SMIs for free or at low cost in order to help them to define a new product integrating a new electronic technology. JES!SICA does not provide direct financial support to SMIs; other national or European programmes do provide this type of support. CNFM (C omit6 National de Formlation en Microelectronique) and LETIKEA (Laboratoire d’Electronique, de Technologie et d’Instrumentation / Commissariat a 1’Energie Atomique) were jointly entrusted with the national co-ordination of JESSICA in France. 2. Training actions for Small and Medium Industries Continuing education constitutes a very important part of the JESSICA programme. More than the third of the budget is devoted to SMIs training. The CNFM is a network of eleven facility centres spread over France. More than thirty universities and engineering schools are associated to CNFM centres. The CNFM is in charge of the continuing education and organises most of the training actions. Moreover, the CNFM plays an active part in the expertise and technical assistance provided to SMIs. In France, SMIs are rather small-sized. JESSICA usually deals with “traditional” SMIs that are not considered as “high-tech”. They cannot afford getting upto-date with the new technologies and do not have time for training. Engineers in charge of JESSICA play an important part: when they get in touch with the SMIs they have to convince them that new electronic technologies can enable them to realise more efficient and more economical products. Information on the help that JESSICA can give to SMIs is broadcasted using different ways: mailing, exhibitions, press advertisements, short (two hours) meetings, . . . Engineers in charge of JESSICA are in constant contact with SMIs, they also visit them in order to know their problems better and offer them appropriate solutions. All the services provided by JESSICA were defined in order to answer the concrete needs of the SMIs. It is difficu1.t and often takes long to convince SMIs to use a new technology. However, when SMIs do agree, they wish to obtain results very quickly. The assistance provided must be concrete, and applicable immediately. These criteria apply to training. The CNFM and its partners offer two types of training, especially defined in order to match the expectations of SMIs: l Short training sessions (one to three days) present general data on the economical or technical aspects of ASICs or new electronic technologies. These sessions are generally organised to help SMI’s managers start working in these new fields. O-8186-7996-4/97$10.00