Welcome to the third issue of our e-newsletter.

Here, we hope to share with you the latest information about our Growing Enterprises With Technology Upgrade (GET-Up) initiative. It aims to help you make the most of the advisory and financial assistance schemes that we have tailored for local enterprises in the manufacturing sector.

Formed in April 2003, the Plastic Moulding Taskforce brings three local research institutes (RIs) together in a bid to help plastic moulding companies move away from the cut-throat competition of being pure manufacturing sub-contractors.

The aim, says the Taskforce’s chairman Dr. Lee  Loke Chong is to move local companies engaged in plastic moulding up the value chain – from pure-play OEM(original equipment manufacturers) to ODM (original design manufacturers) and ultimately OBM (original brand manufacturers).

The Taskforce consists of seven members from three A*STAR RIs here – Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) and Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE). SIMTech brings in its expertise in process technologies, IHPC its computer modeling and simulation expertise and IMRE its knowledge of materials science.

Dr. Lee added that there are about 100 plastic moulding manufacturers in Singapore. Most of them started out as sub-contractors for foreign MNCs who brought in the know-how and “spoon-fed” the local boys in the manufacturing process. And Singapore bloomed.

But that is now history. There is a change in the mindset of the MNCs, said Dr Lee, as the industry trend is moving to shorter product cycles. ”MNCs are saying that the days of designing their own products and then feeding manufacturing parts to locals are not working anymore,” Dr Lee added.

And there is also the threat of cheaper manufacturing costs in other countries – most notably China. “Locals need to move from manufacturing centric activities to design and development centric activities,” said Dr Lee.

That’s where the Taskforce comes in. It aims to offer a one-stop multi-agency solution to help the plastic moulding industry transform itself. It will also seek to attract the industry to join as members of an industry consortium and represent a united front to boost the plastic moulding industry.

Here are some planned activities for the Taskforce:

• get bulk discount in a computer-aided engineering software for consortium member

• organize training courses and technology upgrade sessions - like in MicroMoulding proces

• Organise seminars and dialogue sessions

• try to bring-in EDB and SPRING Singapore to get funding for members

• lead members to international trade missions and shows

While the fee for membership has not been set yet, it will be a nominal one, says Dr Lee as the main aim is to inculcate willingness to work together for the common good of the industry.

Keeping the temperature down

In response to the pressing needs of the industry, another taskforce “Precision Equipment Making Taskforce” has also been set up under the GET-UP Initiative. This taskforce aims to grow local equipment companies into high value innovation-driven equipment designers and manufacturers through capability development.

The Precision Equipment Making Taskforce will provide sustainable R&D support for the machinery and equipment sector. It draws multi-disciplinary expertise from the research institutes including Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Institute of High-performance Computing, Data Storage Institute, and Design Technology Institute.

The taskforce is working on the Equipment Technology 21 (ET21) consortium to bring together the research community and the industry. The concerted effort will address common critical issues as well as emerging technologies in the areas of precision equipment design/simulation and manufacturing, equipment configuration and lifecycle management, embedded and robust equipment control.

Consortiums and Taskforce groups of A*STAR research institutes

Over the years, A*STAR RIs have also established various consortiums to boost the manufacturing industry in Singapore.  The table below lists some of the currently active consortiums of A*STAR RIs.

For more information, please contact
 

Homegrown fabless semiconductor design house Winedge & Wireless wants to be isolated from the rest of the crowd, quite literally. And they want to make big business doing that.

The license-free ISM bands today are cluttered with radio waves coming from a multitude of devices – cordless phones, wireless LANs, walkie-talkies and more. This is especially a problem in countries with high population as too many users of such devices in the vicinity can jam each other’s signals, resulting in dropped calls or noisy transmissions.

FRS (Family Radio Service) walkie-talkies in particular are selling well in the US because they are affordable, costs nothing in airtime and can reach ranges of 2 km – popular among friends and family who want to stay in touch when outdoors. But the overcrowded ISM spectrum is creating many disgruntled users and Winedge believes that it can develop a superior chip that can be used in walkie-talkies which can protect the communications channel between the users. This technology is called Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum and its chip is called Ultra SST.

But that’s not all, Winedge is also planning to develop technology that can increase the range of these walkie-talkies fourfold (to 8 km) without an increase in power. “The important thing is to be able to increase range without compromising battery life,” said Steven Santiago, co-founder and CTO of Winedge.

The great thing about the 8-year-old company is that it already has know-how in making RF and baseband chips which it has been selling for a number of years. Its Winceiver RF chips are already used by Radio Shack wireless headsets and in wireless game controllers of Playstation2 from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. Its Ultra 51 baseband chip has been used in PDAs, pagers, and SMS phones.

Winedge can bring its know-how in RF and baseband to accelerate its development of its next chip. Although Winedge already has its own R&D team, it needs specific expertise in creating the new Ultra SST chip. So it was simply thrilled when it managed to secure technical assistance under the GET-Up initiative: two researchers under the T-Up (Technology for Enterprise Capability Upgrading) program plus the expertise of a Technical Adviser.

Pang Tuck Wing, CFO of Winedge said that the researchers are a big boost to getting the new chip to market faster as the researchers have both commercial and technical expertise. “We are strong in innovation and ideas but the researchers bring new angles to help us crystallize our concept,” said Pang.

“Normally, we are just working to survive, but together with A*STAR, we can now dream of the big time,” he added.

At the first Technical Advisers (TA) get-together held on 14 August 2003, about a dozen TAs shared their experiences and feedback about their work with their attached companies. The round-table discussion was chaired by GET-Up Steering Committee Chairman Prof. Hang Chang Chieh.

Many TAs spoke of how they are contributing significantly to the R&D as well the technology roadmapping of the various companies. Several said that they are treated as an important member of the R&D team and are involved in many meetings and projects. Some are even heading the R&D teams of their attached companies.

One TA is even bringing in PhD students into his attached company’s R&D team. Prof. Hang lauded the move and encouraged other TAs to follow suit, as it would benefit the companies and expose the postgraduate students to the industry.

Prof. Hang added that the TA secondment scheme is becoming popular and that he is getting more requests.  Each request received will be assessed carefully, to ensure that the companies have the potential to “Grow, Glow and Globalise” One of the main criteria in selecting companies is whether the managing director is a dynamic person. “If the boss is not dynamic, then even if we make suggestions, they won’t move,” he said.

Another TA said that he learned about the entrepreneurship qualities of small companies from his attachment. He was surprised that his company “jumped” onto a particular technology without really knowing how difficult it was to implement it. But he added that he was optimistic, and that he learned the meaning of true entrepreneurship from the company.

Prof. Hang added that companies and research institutes manage their manpower very differently. Companies allocate staff based on products while RIs manage researchers by their skill-sets. Using the latter approach means that the same staff’s expertise can be deployed across projects and not be under-utilised. This model may be introduced to the larger local enterprises.

If you shopped for a new steam iron today, you would be hard-pressed to find one with the good old shiny metallic-silver soleplate.

Most of the new irons today come with an extra layer of coloured coating on the soleplate for a smoother run. These coatings usually consist of enamel or Teflon but Philips has recently added another type of material called sol-gel.

Sol-gel is really a manufacturing process where a liquid sol is prepared then converted into a solid gel followed by drying and heat treatment. A local research institute, the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech) has been conducting intensive research on the use of metal-oxides in a sol-gel process to develop scratch-resistant coatings, self-cleaning coatings, biologically active coatings (like in implants), LCD panels, optical fibres and more.

Through a collaborative research effort with electronics giant Philips, a heat-resistant and scratch-resistant coating was developed using the sol-gel process. A few years ago, Philips commercialized the coating by putting it into its high-end steam irons.

But the real beauty of sol-gel in irons, said Dr Sandor Nemeth, a research scientist at SIMTech who is involved in this research, is that the material allows for greater freedom in adding colour and patterns to the soleplate coating. This is one of its greatest advantages over Teflon and enamel.

Sol-gel coating is also more wear-resistant compared to Teflon with comparable gliding smoothness. It is also comparable to enamel in its scratch-resistance but can be produced in much lower processing temperatures, he added.

Moving forward with its experience in using sol-gel for irons, SIMTech is now researching the use of sol-gel in other applications like self-cleaning, anti-reflective, scratch and abrasion resistant, anti-corrosion and decorative coatings in an advanced state. It hopes to introduce this new technology to our local enterprises and a number of projects may be realised soon.

It’s called HyperSCSI. It’s an entirely new and revolutionary network data transmission language (or protocol in computerspeak) that can cut the price of implementing Storage Area Networks (SAN) by half - and it’s made in Singapore.

Developed by DSI over several years of research, the HyperSCSI protocol was released to open source in August 2002 and the response has been good.

It’s early days still for DSI’s baby, says Patrick Khoo, a program manager at DSI who has been in-charge of the HyperSCSI project from the beginning, but it has already been downloaded over 1,800 times since its release to the public.

“That’s close to 5-6 downloads per day,” said Khoo.

Although no major commercialisations have been announced, Khoo said that DSI has been talking to a diverse set of IT vendors and manufacturers, including those in the consumer electronics industry.

HyperSCSI is a compelling and cheaper alternative to fibre channel because it runs on Ethernet architecture so devices that are made to work with HyperSCSI will also automatically be cheaper. For example in fibre channel SANs, devices are fitted with a host bus adapter that can cost about S$1,000 to $2,000 but for HyperSCSI, all that is needed is a regular Ethernet network-interface-card.

Khoo explains that fibre channel came about because SANs needed a technology to transmit data at high speeds. In those days, Ethernet was too slow as it could only transmit at 10 Mbps. But Ethernet has matured and today has hit speeds of 10 Gbps (1 Gbps = 1,000 Mbps).  And that is why HyperSCSI is such an attractive proposition.

Apart from being used in storage networks, HyperSCSI can also be implemented in consumer electronics to make them network capable, says Khoo. By adding the HyperSCSI to devices like DVD and VCD players, consumers on different PCs can view the same movie in the DVD/VCD player at the same time.

An alternative to HyperSCSI is the use of the popular Web protocol TCP/IP but Khoo says that HyperSCSI is even cheaper and requires much less processing power than TCP/IP. Having high processing power requirements means that devices needs to be fitted with more powerful – and therefore more expensive – processors.

Khoo is proud of his baby and of DSI.“It’s a technical achievement for a local research institute. We created a new invention out of nothing and not a case of making it a bigger or better deal on somebody else’s technology,” said Khoo.

“It’s like we created English, not just making Singlish out of English,” he added.