Low Labor Cost Hardware Design

As I sit here in a hotel room in Penang, Malaysia, on a trip to train engineers in signal integrity design, I'm reminded of an article in a recent EE Times magazine about board design trends in India [1].  The article claims that there will be 805 new board design starts in 2008 in India, up from 628 new designs in 2007.  Most of the designs are in the consumer and telecom industries according to the article.  The article concludes by saying that India needs to "generate design engineers who can handle the complexities of interconnection between higher-speed devices."  In other words, India needs to get trained in signal integrity design.  It is truly becoming a global world for design engineering, and you really have to get out into that world and see it from the other side to appreciate that concept fully.  I don't believe that low labor cost engineering will eliminate U.S. engineering jobs in the long run.  Labor costs will increase rapidly in the low labor cost regions.  There are too many consumer goods available over here at U.S. prices that people will naturally want to have their share of.  The competition in product development is now scaling up to the global level, and that's sure to cause a lot of change in the coming years.  What an exciting time to be an engineer.

[1] Krishnadas, K.C. July 28, 2008. "Board Design Trending Up in India." Electronic Engineering Times.