Steve DeCollibus, Managing Editor, Circuitnet

Friday afternoon after we published Circuitnet we learned that Siemens was cutting 17,000 people world wide. Of the 17,000 people, 330 jobs will be cut from it's Electronics Assembly Systems business unit, which currently employs 2000 people world wide. It is expected that 250 cuts will be in Germany, the rest will come from other EAS groups globally. This brings the total loss of jobs at EAS to 480 or almost 25% of it's global work force.

 

While the cuts were announced as part of the bigger reduction in force, it appears that the EAS cuts are part of the previously announced group plans to transform the division into an independent subsidiary by Q3 this year.

 

What impact these cuts will have on a successful transformation remain to be seen.