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Welcome to the fifth 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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It was an exciting and activity-packed first
year for the GET-Up scheme in 2003. Although slightly short of its
ambitious 500 target, GET-Up managed to visit about 450 companies in
its first year, which comes up to an amazing 2 companies visited per
work-day.
Of the 450 visits, 44 companies took up the
T-Up scheme, with 55 Research Scientist and Engineers (RSEs)
seconded across the 44 companies. The RSEs proved to be an
invaluable resource for the local companies. Most said that the
scheme helped them to gain access to top researchers which was
needed to push the company forward in its technology roadmap. One
example is Kikuze Solutions, whose T-Up RSE, Dr. Allan Zhang, helped
the company to develop a breakthrough colour calibration system –
the first of its kind in the world – for digital colour printers.
Mr. Winson Lan, CEO of Kikuze said: “ If not
for T-Up, I would not have been able to gain access to Dr. Zhang. If
not for T-Up, even if he knew me, Dr. Zhang would not join my
company.”
The point Mr. Lan is making is that top
researchers would not normally eye positions in SMEs but instead aim
for big MNCs and leading research institutes. T-Up’s 2-year
secondment scheme lets RSEs get a feel of the industry without fear
of losing their jobs if they wished to return after the secondment.
In addition, there were 18 Technical advisors
appointed to help 15 companies with their high-level R&D.
Operation Technology Roadmapping (OTR) was also a success, with 58
companies completing OTR. Of the 450 companies visited, the majority
were in the engineering segment (50%) followed by the infocomm
(25%), electronics (15%) and chemical (11%) industries.
Dr. Mike Ferrell, one of the main facilitators of OTR gave a
presentation of OTR preliminary results at the end of last year. He
said that the companies that took part in OTR ranged from 3 to
10,000 men companies and were generally from the manufacturing
industry. He added that studies showed that companies that had
completed OTR displayed significant improvements in being more
attuned to market conditions.
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GET-UP moves on to its next phase with the appointment of Prof. Chong Tow Chong
as its new chairman on 1 January 2004. Prof. Chong, known for his
leadership at A*STAR’s Science and Engineering Research Council, as
well as the Data Storage Institute, brings with him a wealth of
experience. He plans to continue with many of the good policies and
practices of GET-Up, while at the same time injecting new strategies and
approaches to make it even more successful.
The current schemes of seconding researchers to
companies for up to two years under T-Up, helping companies to map their
technology roadmap with Operation & Technology Roadmapping (OTR) and
matching leading researchers to companies under Technical Advisers
Support schemes will all be maintained. The difference, however, is that
Prof. Chong wants to take a more focused strategy in approaching SMEs to
take up the various GET-UP schemes.
Instead of visiting as many SMEs as possible, Prof.
Chong aims to make every visit count. Last year, 450 SMEs were visited
with about 58 companies going for OTR, and 44 of them latching onto the
T-Up scheme. This was a good start for GET-Up, said Prof Chong. His
new approach is to take a “clustering approach” to meeting up with
local SMEs. What this means is that the leading MNCs will first be
identified and measures will be taken to further anchor their roots
here. Then the entire value chain that supports these MNCs as well as
our GLCs will be studied and those local SMEs within these chains will
be the target companies for the GET-UP schemes.
“The aim is to continue attracting and anchoring
MNCs while strengthening the entire value chain,” said Prof Chong.
“At the same time, we will work towards nurturing local SMEs to become
future MNCs.” Singapore’s competitive edge in today’s globalised
economy is its very strong manufacturing value chain – from R&D to
logistics to finance and management.
Another new initiative is the formation of industry
taskforce and consortiums. Specific industries like plastic moulding and
wafer technology are first identified and inter-research institute task
forces are created to collaborate on identifying the future trends in
these areas. Companies are then invited to form a consortium with their
respective task forces to work together in charting and developing
technologies that can be potential witness in the future.
Prof Chong reiterated GET-UP’s mission to foster
world-class research and develop human capital for the prosperity of
Singapore.
“The end goal is to build a knowledge-based economy for Singapore and
we cannot do it without the industry’s participation.”
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Calibrating
a digital colour printer to print the exact colours that were intended
by the content creator is a real challenge. Every single printer (even
two of the same model) prints
the same colour differently. So designers and artists often can’t get
the exact colour that they want when using digital print.
Normally, they would resort to the more expensive and traditional
offset printing systems to ensure colour accuracy in the prints.
But a new technology by homegrown company Kikuze
Solutions now enables digital colour printers to be able to print almost
as close as to the originally intended colour. Using Kikuze’s patented
Focoltone Intelligent Colour Calibration System (ICCS) 2.0, the digital
colour proofing process can now take 5 minutes as compared to the colour
separation techniques for traditional prints which takes 2-3 hours.
 With a shorter lead time, prints can come out
faster without a loss in image colour accuracy. This increase in lead
time is exemplified in the recent MTV Asia Awards, where HP managed to
print 300 full-colour, offset-quality 36-page books in less than 12
hours, using Kikuze’s ICCS 2.0 technology. Typically, it would take
2-3 days to complete a job like this.
The research on ICCS 2.0 took two years to
complete, but it was the coming on board of Dr. Allan Zhang about a year
ago under the T-UP scheme that changed the entire focus of coming up
with an accurate colour calibration system for digital printers. With
Dr.Zhang’s fresh perspective and software programming expertise,
Kikuze was able to break the technology barrier and come up with an
easier method to solve the colour calibration problem. Instead of the
traditional focus on trying to calibrate the digital colour printers at
source, Dr.Zhang looked at the print output and then compared that to a
standard colour chart. The ICCS 2.0 software studies the variations
between the output and the standard chart and then recalibrates the
system to reduce the variations to an insignificant amount. A new page
can then be printed which will then be almost as close to the original
colours intended.
Mr. Winson Lan, CEO of Kikuze, said; “This
success was only possible with the T-UP scheme which helped me to get
Dr.Zhang on board. We are now applying for an extension of his
secondment with us so that we can develop this technology to the next
level.”
Now, Mr.Lan is looking to develop a small box device containing the ICCS
2.0 that can be attached directly to digital printers, instead of the
current Adobe Photoshop plug-in solution. Later, the aim is to embed the
technology into a microchip which can then be built into the printers.
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A
US-Singapore research programme is underway to develop new technologies
that will bring the science of chip-packaging to the next level. The
programme is developing nano wafer level packaging technologies which
can package chips at the wafer level. Traditionally, chip-packaging is
done “externally” - square
pieces of chips are cut-out or “diced” from a mini-pizza sized
silicon wafer before being mounted onto external boards. The end result
is that the final usable packaged chip is much larger than the actual
chip itself. But with wafer level packaging, the aim is to package it on
the wafer itself, which gives the packaged chip the same surface area as
the chip itself.
This
programme is a joint collaboration between the Institute of
Microelectronics (IME), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and
the Georgia Tech Packaging Research Centre (GT), USA. Dr Mahadevan K.
Iyer who heads the programme at IME said that the programme aims to
develop both state-of-the-art as well as future technologies.
“We
are looking into two aspects. One is short term – what companies would
need in 2-3 years. The other is longer term, what they need in 6-7
years,” said Dr. Iyer. That is why there are different phases to the
project. The first is to develop 100nm wafer-level packaging
technologies while the second is on 20nm wafer-level technologies.
 In
addition to a smaller package footprint, wafer-level packaging can also
result in lower costs, faster and more efficient manufacturing
processes. At the 20nm level, traditional materials cannot withstand the
stresses of such high-level manufacturing process. The solution is to
turn to using nano-level particles and materials to complement the
design of 20 nm wafer-level package technology.
 Over
70 researchers from the three institutions are involved in this
three-year research programme which first started in 2002. To keep in
touch, the researchers use video conferencing, conference calls and
e-mail. Face-to-face meetings are also done several times a year.
Dr.
Iyer said that the team has already developed the prototype for two of
the three implementations of the 100nm process, The next stage is to
conduct reliability, yield and repeatability tests before the technology
can be offered to the industry for use.
For more information, pls contact
Tan Teck Chun
DID: 67705409
Email: teckchun@ime.a-star.edu.sg
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Helping the industry move up the value chain is
what Exploit Technologies (Exploit) does best. The 2-year-old
centralised research commercialisation arm of A*STAR aims to promote the
technology transfer from the 12 A*STAR research institutes (RI) to the
industry to help them move up the technology ladder which makes them
more competitive and in turn fuels the economic growth of the nation.
Dr. Sze Tiam Lim, senior manager of
commercialisation, science & engineering division at Exploit, said
that Exploit was formed to serve as a one-stop-centre for the industry
to contact for search for useful technology that can benefit their
business. “One advantage of this centralised service is the ability to
protect, manage and bundle technologies from different RI to better
serve the needs of the industry,” said Dr Sze.
 Because Exploit has a bird’s eye view of all the
various research and technologies coming from the different RIs, it is
in a good position to give a more holistic picture of what technology is
available to the companies. Administratively, it is also easier for the
companies to deal with one entity instead of multiple ones.
BIGontheNet and SQLView are just two examples of local companies that
have licensed technology from the RIs – in this case the Infocommm
Institute of Research, through ETPL.
BIGontheNet is a local
Internet search company that implemented several knowledge management
technologies from I2R via Exploit to enable a language translation
module into IPOS’s one-stop patent-search portal, reaching out to the
Chinese community. SQLView is working to make their records management
system solutions more attractive by licensing cutting-edge
categorisation technology from I2R and turning it into a commercial
product. Stephen Lim, CEO SQLView said: “One of the biggest challenges
in record management systems is to have an effective categoriser; by
adding this new feature to our existing product, we can become more
competitive.”
| Dr Sze added that ETPL has recruited a team of experts in the
areas of IP management, technology intelligence and competitive
intelligence, commercialisation of technology, legal, management of
incubation and spin-offs. From filing patents to closing licensing
deals, this team of experts has domain knowledge ranging from Chemical
& Biological Sciences, to Computational, Mathematical & Physical
Sciences, Electronics & Microsystems Engineering and IT &
Communications. The team works closely with the RI to protect and manage
their Intellectual Property and works closely with the industry to
market these technologies. |
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For
more information, pls contact
Dr Sze Tiam Lin
Tel: 64788441
Email: tiamlin@exploit-tech.com
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A new R&D funding program was launched recently
by A*STAR’s Science and Research Engineering Council (SERC). Called
the Thematic Strategic Research Programme (TSRP), it takes on a new
directed approach to supporting R&D which focuses research on areas
which have been identified as “high-impact” and of significant
benefit to the Singapore economy over the medium and long term.
Dr Rajendran Thampuran, Deputy Director of SERC,
said that the new thematic approach was different from the traditional
“broad funding” process where proposals were open to all
disciplines.
With a thematic approach, research can lead to the
creation of enabling technologies and platforms that will benefit
industry clusters in terms of breadth in the diversity of applications
and depth in its value chain.
This new approach also aims to foster closer
collaboration between the research community and research
institutions.
Initially, 8 potential areas of research were
identified by the SERC. At eight separate workshops held last year,
individual researchers gave presentations to
panels of local and overseas experts, who then submitted their
reports to the TSRP steering committee. After careful study of the
reports, the committee narrowed the categories to four for this year.
These are Nanomanufacturing Technologies, Polymer and Molecular
Electronics, Ultra WideBand (UWB) & Pervasive Computing and Industrial IT – Integrated
Manufacturing and Service Systems (IMSS).
For Nanomanufacturing, the focus is to advance
knowledge and assemble capability in furthering the frontiers of
semiconductor processes at 45 nanometers and beyond for high speed, low
power processor applications of the future.
UWB & Pervasive Computing aims to research into
how UWB capabilities such as wide data rate spectrum, low cost, low power consumption and location-awareness
can be fully realised and exploited to bring pervasive computing to the
next level.
IMSS refers to the elaborate network of spare parts manufacturers,
distributors and other service providers that work together to maintain
the relationship with the customer and ensure the satisfactory
performance of a sold product.
As for Polymer and Molecular Electronics, the focus is on researching on
plastic electronic technology to develop and integrate innovative active
devices and novel material properties to create diverse electrical and
optical components and subsystems.
For more information, pls visit TSRP
website
or contact
Mr David Woon
Tel: 6826 6216
Email: david_woon@a-star.edu.sg
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