New users are always welcome. To join, contact project manager Mauro Onori at KTH Royal Institute Of Technology, telephone: +46 8 7906637, E-mail: onori@iip.kth.se
Current users are:
NXP BL Sound Solutions Vienna (former Philips BL Sound Solutions) was founded in 1929 and therefore one of the first factories for Philips outside the Netherlands. Up to the year 1970 mainly speakers for the application in the broadcasting area have been produced. In 1990 a strategic decision was made to start producing for the increasing communication market and finally to acquire it intensively. In the following years a great business extension was quickly reached because of modern technologies (high automated manufacturing) and a high product quality. After producing speakers for the cable-bound telecommunication at the beginning, it was necessary to develop new small products for the rapidly growing market of mobile phones. With these products a world wide leading position has been reached and consolidated.
Within the company I am responsible for developing and engineering new manufacturing lines at NXP BL Sound Solutions together with 13 other employees who are divided into two groups. These include "semi automated" lines with an output of about 5 Million and "high volume" automated lines with an amount of 40 Million pieces per year and line. The main challenge is to create a robust manufacturing design which allows an easy implementation of all necessary processes (up to 30 process steps per line) and avoids all non profit processes, taking into consideration that every 0.6 seconds a high quality product leaves the line.
The motivation of NXP BL Sound Solutions to take part in the EUPASS project was to get new ideas of manufacturing designs, in direction of maximize modularity, flexibility and interchange ability of modules and to think a little bit out of the box intelligent process modules with some evolvability. Also to bring in our experience in highly automated solutions was a key motivation. Therefore NXP BL Sound Solutions is a partner and contributes a realistic test case in which the EUPASS methodology can be checked and proven. My role is to represent NXP BL Sound Solutions and to have a look on the aims of the EUPASS project. I am also supporting the realization of our test case by supplying materials and process information if needed. Among other things the main challenge is to realize the EUPASS idea, taking into account that the intended advantages can easily be used for the fully automated micro assembly industry in the future. Our vision in terms of micro assembly is to evolve our manufacturing design to become more robust, which should shorten our ramp up phase and increases therefore our speed in time to market.
For more information: www.nxp.com
MA3 Solutions provides flexible assembly and finishing solutions for MST (Micro-Systems Technology) products. The focus is primarily on companies that wish to industrialise a prototype or that for quality, accuracy or cost reasons want to switch from manual to fully-automatic assembly. MA3 stands for More Accessible Micro Assembly within a Modular Architecture. MA3 Solutions has developed the 'Process Cook' principle based on modules. Rather than developing new systems from scratch, they look at the customer's micro-systems and the prototype that is already there. By selecting proven 'ingredients' and ready-to-go 'recipes' (assembly processes and equipment developed in-house) they bring the product to pilot series production and scalable volume production equipment. This concept anticipates the future standardisation of micro systems production. This is where the link with EUPASS comes in: these kind of solutions need an infrastructure and EUPASS has the capabilities in terms of the interfaces, standards to come to a complete solution for the production industry.
For more information: www.ma3solutions.com
Adept Japan develops, manufactures and markets highly accurate assembly machines for the semiconductor, ICT, optical, medical and electronics industries. Its strength is the combination of new machine concepts in desk top sizes and the ability to implement these concepts into the customers’ environment. The contact with EUPASS was established in Japan where it became clear that Adept and EUPASS have the same goal. Adept Japan linked up with EUPASS to share its mutual findings that the market for standard business is declining due to the fierce competition from low-labour countries. Adept’s machines such as Micro Workcell type 30 machine with alignment accuracy of 0.1 micron (also showcased at IPAS 2006) fit perfectly into the EUPASS concept thanks to its size. Adept Japan also delivered a miniature disk driver for the IPOD of which millions were sold in the last quarter of 2005. Another example is a pill-size mini camera which Adept Japan developed for a customer in the medical market.
Visit www.adeptjapan.co.jp for more information.