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Welcome to the fourth 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. |
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 Innovation is the
key to success. And GET-Up can help local enterprises gain
that competitive edge. That’s the message coming from Mr Ko Kheng
Hwa, Deputy Chairman of the GET-Up Steering Committee and Managing
Director of EDB.
Mr Ko said that
competition in the international marketplace has intensified
and enterprises here face low cost rivals from overseas.
On the other hand, there are tremendous opportunities for
innovative products in both the huge markets of the developed
countries as well as in the rapidly growing Asian economies.He
added. “To thrive in this environment, our local enterprises
need to compete by differentiation – by offering better products
and/or lower-cost products.” Mr Ko shared 3 success
stories of how local enterprises
have gained by innovating through R&D and exploiting technology.
However, a number of the local companies do
not have the technical resources to do R&D. This is where GET-Up
comes in, Mr Ko continued, by helping the companies gain access to
the vast resources of A*STAR research institutes.
“Our aim is to
help local enterprises kick-start their in-house R&D efforts and
for them to continue to build this R&D capability in order to
churn out a constant stream of innovations. GET-Up encourages
and supports our enterprises to use the vast resources of A*STAR
research institutes. We will match the needs of each
participating enterprise and identify the research scientists and
engineers (RSEs) to be seconded to the enterprise. And EDB
will subsidise the cost of these seconded RSEs. In this way,
our local enterprises will become more competitive and grow
internationally, Mr Ko added.
He also said that he
was encouraged by the positive response of the industry – about
100 enterprises have benefited from the range of GET-Up schemes and
many are in discussions on possible collaborations.
Mr Ko also advised
companies to give GET-Up a go.
“Our
research institutes are not doing rocket science research.
They are down to earth, willing and able to work with enterprises on
practical projects with commercial potential. Do give it a
try. Remember, nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he
added.
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Case
Studies
Jumain Sataysfaction Pte
Ltd
Jumain Sataysfaction Pte Ltd is a S$1.5 million satay-supplying family
business, which increased productivity through an investment of
S$85,000 in the development of two satay-skewering machines.
With these machines, up to 6,000 satay sticks can be produced an
hour, compared to the 250 sticks that a person can produce manually.
In the face of mounting competition, this company did not withhold
investments in upgrading, and as a result, has become more
competitive today, and is even expanding into markets overseas.
S.E.A.
Hydropower Pte Ltd
Continuous
upgrading of production facilities has helped S.E.A. Hydropower Pte
Ltd grow to be one of the leading hydraulic cylinder manufacturers
in Asia. Over the last 4 years, the company has more than
doubled its revenues to S$7.6 million, and invested in technology
that greatly increased productivity. For example, S.E.A.
Hydropower invested in a US$1 million skiving and roller burnishing
machine that could polish a cylinder tube in 5 minutes, a marked
improvement from the previous machine which took 4 hours to complete
the same task. The increased productivity resulted not only in
time and cost savings, the company was also able to capture higher
volume from increasing market demand for such services.
Y3
Technologies Pte Ltd
Home-grown
supply chain solutions provider, Y3 Technologies Pte Ltd, attributes
the 20% annual increase in sales revenue over the last 3 years to
its continuous efforts in R&D. The company invested S$1
million to develop its award-winning Intributor - a new web-enabled
manufacturing logistics solution designed to manage the flow of raw
materials, information and financial transactions between global
suppliers and manufacturers. It is part of the Y3 suite of
logistics solution used by more than 300 MNCs and SMEs worldwide.
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Members of the local business and manufacturing
community gained a better understanding of the various GET-Up schemes
from recent conferences and site visits.
SMA conference
Over 200 members of the Singapore Manufacturers’
Federation (SMA) and the wider business community got a close-up view of
the various public financial assistance schemes available at a recent
conference organized by the SMA. The “Financial Assistance Schemes –
What the Public Sector Can Do For Your Business” conference was
sponsored by the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) and supported by the
four GET-Up government agencies - Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB),
International Enterprise Singapore (IE Singapore), Standards,
Productivity and Innovation Board (SPRING Singapore) and Agency for
Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) as well as the National
Environment Agency (NEA).
Chaired by Ms Low Sin Leng, SMA Council Member and
Group Chief Operating Officer of Semcorp Industries, the conference
featured speakers from the five supporting government agencies who
covered a wide range of topics dealing with the various assistance
schemes.
The schemes include
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startup enterprise development,
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innovation and development,
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research incentives,
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international marketing assistance,
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double tax deductions for market and investment
development,
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local enterprise and technical assistance finance and loan
insurance,
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growing enterprises through technology upgrading,
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innovation for environmental sustainability and others.
The forum also presented a good opportunity for
participants to clarify issues on the appropriate assistance schemes for
their businesses, application criteria, eligibility concerns and other
matters.
Site visits to research institutes
To bring greater awareness on the opportunities of
the T-Up scheme to the business community, the Singapore Chinese Chamber
of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI) arranged for several site visits
to A*Star research institutes (RIs) for its members.
A total of over 160 SCCCI members visited four
A*STAR RIs - the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology
(SIMTech), the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Institute of
Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) and the Data Storage Institute
(DSI).
The RIs shared with the companies on how they could make full use of the
T-Up scheme to gain access to top research talent. where the research
scientists and engineers from the RIs would be seconded to their
organisations to undertake R&D work. |
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 Irving
Hu has a big dream.
Right now, the managing director of e-factory
solutions provider iDimension is selling a suite of “imported”
best-of-breed e-factory software together with consultancy and services
to big-name clients like Agilent, Matsushita, DuPont and Philips. But he
hopes to be able to change all of that one day.
Not that he plans to move away from his profitable
and high-growth e-factory solutions business, but that he dreams of
being able to offer his very own suite of “made in Singapore”
e-manufacturing solutions one day. Then he can even export back to the
very countries that he is now importing from.
Hu has already taken the first step to realizing
his dream, with the aid of licensed technology from the Singapore
Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech) and two SIMTech
researchers seconded for two years under the T-Up scheme.
“With this T-Up scheme, we can get access to top
research talents that we would otherwise, we would be hard pressed to find,” said Hu.
While his “completely made in Singapore” vision
remains on the horizon, Hu is not losing focus of the present. His
current e-factory suite has one missing component – an affordable and
powerful software that focuses on the scheduling aspects of the
e-factory solution. That’s where the “GSS” source code that he has
licensed from SIMTech comes in. Once developed into a product, he can
add GSS to his software suite and offer an attractively priced
end-to-end e-factory solution to his customers. But having the source
code is not enough. Top brains are needed to turn the code into a usable
product. That’s why he needs the help of the two researchers from
SIMTech.
Hu has big plans for GSS. Most of his clients are
now non-semiconductor high-tech companies, but he is now also aiming for
the bigger boys – the semiconductor high-tech companies. And GSS’s
scheduling software can help him achieve his goal.
GSS is very flexible, adds Hu, so he can customize solutions for both
the traditional high-tech industry as well as other new areas like
healthcare and pharmaceuticals. |
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 For
the last few decades, Moore’s law – that the number of transistors
per square inch on integrated circuits doubles every 18 months - has
held firm. But now that the manufacturing process is approaching the
sub-100 nanometre level, new challenges test its continued relevance.
One of these challenges is the lack of affordable
lithography techniques – the process of putting patterns on
semiconductor materials to be used as IC – in the sub-100 nm scale.
According to Dr. Low Hong Yee and Mr. Kong Yen Peng, two researchers
from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), the
next generation sub-100 nm lithography techniques like extreme
ultra-violet and electron beam lithography are too expensive.
To overcome this problem, researchers at IMRE came
up with a new method of patterning called reversal nanoimprinting that
can offer a cheaper alternative to the existing sub-100 nm processes.
Conventional nanoimprinting consists of two main
stages – depositing a layer of polymer over the semiconductor material
and then pressing a mold, at high temperature and pressure, over the
polymer to create the “patterns.” Reversal nanoimprinting has many
advantages over conventional imprinting processes. In reversal
nanoimprinting, the process is “reversed” and the polymer is
deposited on the mold instead of the substrate. This method enables one
to make multiple layers of polymer on the semiconductor material at
lower temperature and pressure. Another feature of reversal
nanoimprinting is the ability to form residue free patterns which does
away with an additional step of removing the residue after imprinting.
The pattern resolution is not limited to the diffraction limit as in the
widely used photolithography method. Reversal nanoimprinting offers a
potentially more cost effective nano-fabrication process because it does
not involve high-price equipment and consumables.
 Dr.
Low said: “Although using reversal nanoimprinting was aimed at the
semiconductor market, we discovered we could use the same technique in
other applications such as making 3-D crystals for use in photonics and
biomedical industry as well as developing flexible display panels.
Mr. Kong said that the new technology was developed
by IMRE in collaboration with the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,
USA. The result of this collaboration is the filing of 3 patents and the
potential to put Singapore on the map of high-level manufacturing
technology.
For more information regarding this technology and
the commercialisation potential, please contact:
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 Local
component manufacturer Molex Singapore has recently seen a huge boost in
its productivity. Making use of state-of-the-art design software from
the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), it is able to
shorten its product design cycle and improve productivity in its metal
stamping process by an estimated 400%.
Developed jointly by IHPC and Molex, the
intelligent software – called a knowledge-based rapid virtual
engineering system (KBRVES) - enables a high level of automation in the
computer-aided design (CAD) of progressive dies. Progressive dies are
used to mass-produce metal stampings for electronics components. But
designing such a die is a very complicated process and requires the
creation of a computer model before the actual manufacture of the die.
Conventional CAD software is unable to handle the
complexity in die design efficiently. That is why IHPC and Molex
came together to develop the KBRVES software, which is able to
accelerate the CAD design process by automating the generation of
drawings required by the specific manufacturing process.
Dr Jiang Ridong, the lead researcher of the 10-man
team at IHPC that developed the intelligent software said:
“Conventional CAD software takes 3-4 weeks to design the die but with
our software we can shorten the time significantly to 5-8 days.”
In addition, the KBVRES system keeps a database of
past designs so that they can be re-used in the future. This also
ensures that design knowledge is not lost when key designers leave a
particular company.
Mr. Lim Tong Wah, product development manager
at Molex Singapore said that one way to improve product design and
time-to-market is to reuse legacy data, information and experience of
highly skilled staff.
Mr. Lim added: “Through this system (KBRVES). a
repository of legacy and current information and experience can quickly
be accessed from a single source that helps to facilitate faster design
and development of products, essential to keep up with market trends and
demands.
For more information regarding this technology and
the commercialisation potential, please contact:
Dr Loh Wah Sing
Director (Business Development)
IHPC
Tel: 6419 1310
Email:
lohws@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg
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