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.