4th Sep 2025
Wilson Process Systems, a privately owned UK electronics subcontractor, has been supporting local and overseas customers for well over 40 years. Born in the late 70s from bare PCB fabrication, it has evolved into a well-established CEM.
With this consistent growth, Wilson has continued to expand its footprint into two sites covering 28,000 sqft based in Hastings, East Sussex, where joint Managing Directors, Tim and Nick Wilson, pride themselves on offering an agile and responsive service, with a company ethos of ‘right first time’ and ‘automation where possible’, which has led to proven success over many years. Wilson is also a big advocates of making ‘doing business easy’, which is reflected in its customer base ranging from Cummins, VMS and Kantar, across such industries as industrial control, communications, medical and digital signage.
Key general services include both surface-mount and automated through-hole assembly through a suite of universal equipment, whilst also offering specialist services including automated conformal coating, resin encapsulation and thermal testing where electronic systems require extra protection against ingress and the environmental conditions they reside in. Automated selected soldering is also available alongside a standard reflow process, aqueous washing and AOI (automated optical inspection).
To complement the automated portion of the business, Wilson boasts a 40+ strong team of IPC trained operators, dedicated to the second stage build process. With almost all PCBA’s requiring hand assembly in various forms, Wilson can call upon resources which capture 100 percent component coverage of both PCBA and any ‘Box Build’ system. To enhance this further, tests can be included if required from simple ‘go, no-go’ to full functional tests.With all this combined, concludes a complete selection of resources, which is invaluable to fulfill Wilson’s core competence when supporting customer needs.
It’s this combined ability to offer a full PCB assembly service that’s able to cope with dynamic demands from clients that has made Wilson Process, one of QinetiQ Target Systems’ UK partners of choice for the past 12 years. Over this time, both companies have experienced changes in technologies, challenges in material supply, and exponential demand due to global politics.The support offered by Wilson has played a key role in allowing QinetiQ to develop, manufacture and release new products where the emphasis has been on economical, ultra-reliable PCBAs.
Tim Wilson commented, “we’ve been supporting all our customers with consistent quality for over three decades, helping engineering teams with DFM (design for manufacture) to improve ‘right first time’ prototypes that lead into volume production. This is especially important when considering maximum productivity for high mix PCBAs, or boards requiring conformal coating.
We’ve also promoted collaboration between our procurement team and partner customers to establish a robust supply chain to ensure continuity whilst helping manage inventory, which over the past three years has seen multiple challenges keeping both materials and assembly flowing”.
Whether it be small batch production, urgent samples or scheduled monthly drops, full procurement or free-issue, Wilson is geared to perform.
The ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has permanently changed how manufacturing organizations operate.
Forced to contend with widespread skills shortages, global manufacturers are finding it increasingly difficult to hire staff in a timely manner, with candidates seeking increased flexibility, enrichment, and development in new roles rather than traditional rewards and remuneration.
Elsewhere, the increased digitization and adoption of automated technologies in manufacturing continues at pace, positively impacting responsiveness, productivity, and waste reduction.
Even in manual manufacturing environments, the industry has witnessed growing levels of automation connecting the shop floor with the point of sale, alongside the use of data and analytics which enable modeling and pre-emptive decision-making.
Within the vast defense manufacturing sector, these current trends abound.
As the worldwide threat landscape is constantly evolving, more sophisticated aircraft are being developed, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) use is growing, electronic warfare and swarm tactics are on the rise, and supersonic anti-ship missiles are becoming more prolific.
Additionally, with the emergence of anti-ship ballistic missiles and new hypersonic threats, it can seem impossible for defense manufacturers to keep pace.
Using mission-led innovation, the overarching goal for leading North American manufacturer, QinetiQ Target Systems (QTS), is to be the chosen defense partner around the world, helping shape the future of the sector by solving real-world problems.
“As an internationally leading provider of uncrewed air and surface autonomous platforms, we protect the national security interests of customers by delivering top-of-the-range solutions.
“Designed and developed for threat representation, our products help ensure operational readiness in militaries across the globe,” introduces Director of Operations, Alan Short.
In this way, QTS expertly designs, develops, and manufactures uncrewed vehicles and supporting equipment for weapon system tests and evaluations. These include aerial and surface targets, customizable payloads and towed targets, launchers, and ground control stations.
Additionally, QTS also offers a range of global field services, including custom target operations, global live-fire exercises, and vessel maintenance services for end-to-end training applications.
“With worldwide capability, our customer base is global, with NATO and AUKUS, a security partnership for the Indo-Pacific region between Australia, the UK, and the US, primarily utilizing our product and service offerings,” adds Short.
“At present, we have 150 to 200 employees in the business working both remotely and spread across our two manufacturing facilities in Alberta, Canada, and Ashford, UK.”
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