The European Technology Platform Photonics21 and the European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) have teamed up to conduct a survey to analyse whether the European photonics industry is currently facing supply chain issues similar to those reported for the microelectronics industry.
In a joint statement the organsations said, “We, the photonics industry community, consider it important in the current geopolitical situation to determine in a substantiated manner whether European photonic supply chains are broken and require immediate counteractions, be it at political or business level.
“This question is valid both, in our role as manufacturers of critical photonic components, systems and products, which in turn depend on functioning supply chains and in our role as indispensable suppliers to many OEMs and end-user markets and their system-relevant products and applications.”
In order to know more and better about critical supply chains and to be better positioned to argue on an evidential basis, EPIC and Photonics21 decided to launch a survey that looks more closely at the different aspects of the supply chains, both upstream and downstream.
The partners are asking interested parties in the European industry for their support and time to fill in an online questionnaire “to give us your valuable feedback”. The online questionnaire is divided into 4 parts: cover sheet – to be separated from the rest; participating company statistics; affiliations as purchasers; and affiliations as suppliers.
Photonics21 and EPIC state that they are aware that some questions are of a sensitive and confidential nature: “Therefore, we ensure through the structure of the questionnaire that all statistics and supply chain information cannot be attributed to your specific answers” (hence the cover sheet, to ensure anonymity of the data. Only a few questions are marked as “mandatory”.
For the analysis of the data, the partners are to cooperate with the French Consulting and Market Research company Tematys, which produces research and consulting reports conducted. They state, “Only anonymized data will be shared with Tematys.”
Important and representative data needed
It is of crucial importance to us that this survey provides us with a representative overview of the supply chain situation in our - albeit diversified - industry, so that the conclusions can be used as a basis for future evidential action amongst key influencers and stakeholders in both politics and society.
How to communicate results
It is planned to leave the survey open for 4 weeks (deadline 30 October 2022) and then perform an evaluation of the data. The anonymized and aggregated results will then be shared with political decision makers and may be published by EPIC and Photonics21.
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