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Welcome to the eighth 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
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It’s only been two years, but the GET-UP initiative has achieved
much in the short span of time. As at 31st December
2004, the GET-UP team has reached out to 3,689 local companies
with 525 of these companies being closely monitored for
opportunities to help them grow and upgrade its technology.
Launched in 2003, the aim of GET-UP is to
help local enterprises upgrade their technology capabilities and
to move up the value chain. Or as is often said, to help companies
“grow, glow and globalize.”
There are three main programs under GET-UP.
The most popular is the T-Up program which seconds researchers
from the various research institutes to local enterprises for up
to two years, with up to 70% of the researchers’ secondment
costs subsidised. For this program, there has already been 71
researchers seconded to 56 local companies, with even more in the
pipeline. After the two years is up, the companies can choose to
hire the researchers as full-time employees or the researchers can
return back to their institutes.
Mr James Ling, program director of the GET-UP
initiative said : “With T-Up, small and medium enterprises can
now have access to top research talent. For the researchers, it is
an excellent opportunity to try out working in the industry before
making a move.”
Paul Glendenning is a researcher from the
Singapore Institute of Manufacturing  Technology who has gained
much from the program. Two years ago, he was seconded to Valen
Technologies under the T-Up program.
He went in to focus on the development of anti-reflection
coatings of plastic optical parts and built the entire research
team for the company from ground up. As the R&D Manager in
Valen, he recruited staff and is responsible for charting the
R&D map for the company, including developing new products and
providing technical support to the manufacturing activities.
When his two years was up, he decided to stay on at the company.
Of the T-Up programme, he said: “I think it
is a very valuable program for researchers and for companies. If
the correct people can be matched to the correct companies, and
the expectations of each are clear from the start then it can work
very well. Sometimes joining an industry company can be a bit of a
culture shock for someone from a research background. T-Up offers
the opportunity to try out the experience before joining the
company. I enjoy working in a company like Valen because it is
fast moving and more focused on immediate product applications.”
The other two programs under GET-UP are the Operation &
Technology Roadmapping (OTR) which helps companies to chart their
technology roadmaps and the Technical Advisory program where
senior researchers from the research institutes are appointed as
technical advisers to help the companies address their
technological challenges. OTR has been very successful with 45
companies participating while the TA scheme saw a total of 23
technical advisers appointed for 21 companies.
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Local equipment making companies now have a platform to gain access to
the latest technologies, go for training programs to upgrade their
capabilities and network with other members of the industry. This is possible because of the
equipment making consortium which was formed last October.
Dr Chen Xiaoqi, chairman of the consortium said
that there are currently 14 industry members of the consortium,
including 3 participating A*STAR research institutes (RIs)– the
Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), the Institute
of High Peformance Computing (IHPC) and the Data Storage Institute (DSI).
Dr Chen, who is also a senior scientist and head of SIMTech’s
Integrative Equipment Engineering Programme, said that there were two
key objectives in forming the industry-RI consortium. Firstly, to assist
the local equipment makers move up the value chain by helping them to
upgrade to higher-level design manufacturing capabilities. Secondly, to
help these local companies explore new markets and identify potential
business opportunities.
He added that the three RIs have identified areas that the local companies can focus
on in the future, including macro
and nano dispensing systems, inspection machines, electronics
manufacturing as well as bio-manufacturing in the future.
The consortium meets quarterly and members are kept
abreast of the latest happenings through a quarterly newsletter. In addition, consortium members gain access to facilities of
the RIs at a discount. “We try to arrange for 20-30% discount for
members to use the equipment and tools at our labs.”
Dr Chen also shared that initially some of the
industry members had some reservations about joining the consortium as
they were business competitors. But the potential benefits of the
competitive technologies convinced them. “It is important for everyone
to come together to collectively increase our capabilities, combine our
individual expertise to form a powerful consortium that can better
compete as a united whole,” Dr Chen added.
Local equipment makers who are keen to join the consortium can still
submit their applications to ido@SIMTech.a-star.edu.sg
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If
you’ve always wanted to find out more about your intellectual property
(IP) rights, and never knew who to ask, help is on its way.
The
Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) has been putting all
hands on deck as it bolsters its efforts to reach out and educate SMEs
about the benefits and pitfalls of IP in their business. IPOS has been
making its rounds, literally door-to-door, to meet local Promising
Intellectual Property Enterprises (PIPEs), big and small, to help them
with their queries on IP issues. And the best thing yet, it’s absolutely
free.
‘ Since
we started in July last year, we have met up with over 30 companies
face-to-face, with an average 2-3 separate follow up sessions for each
company,” said Mr Samuel Lee, Assistant Director of the Enterprise
Development Department at IPOS. He added that the aim was to increase
awareness by understanding the IP life cycle from creation through to
exploitation. “We want to help companies, especially those who have IP
of high potential to understand the risks of not adopting IP protection
and to help them align their IP deployment with their business
strategies.” These introductory sessions are at no cost to the
companies. If the PIPEs wish to take concrete steps to better manage
their IP, IPOS will direct them to the appropriate professionals
e.g. patent attorneys, lawyers and even business consultants.
IPOS’
help goes beyond just IP issues. IPOS will help link companies to the
various government agencies and the possible funding schemes available
in
Singapore
where appropriate. “Basically, we go beyond our traditional role as an
IP regulator to be like a facilitator in helping businesses adopt
industry best practices in a hope that they
maximize the return from their IP assets.”
For  companies who can’t spare the time to meet, there is also an
online self-administered SCOPE IP diagnostic tool that helps companies
assess the strengths and weaknesses of their current IP management
practices at their own convenience. SCOPE IP, which stands for
Strategies for the Creation, Ownership, Protection and Exploitation of
IP, is a national IP management programme designed for businesses and
has already helped many SMEs take stock of their existing IP portfolio
and make the necessary improvements to their IP management strategies.
Visit IPOS’ one-stop first-stop IP portal, SurfIP (www.surfip.gov.sg)
for more information.
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Researchers from the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) are vying
with big industry names like Panasonic, Philips, Nokia, Microsoft and
HHI, for its algorithms to be accepted as the standard for a
next-generation video codec called Scalable Video Coding (SVC). SVC is
also known as the extension to the wildly popular H.264 video codec,
which is able to compress video files 2-3 times more efficiently than
MPEG-2, the current default video codec used to create DVD-quality
movies.
Most websites today offer a range of different
quality video streaming to cater to the different bandwidth requirements
of users. Typically, there is one “low quality” for dial-up users,
“medium quality” for the lower broadband speeds and “high
quality” for the super fast lines. But this means that the service
provider would have to store three separate files for each video stream,
which takes up extra storage space. In addition, the entire lengths of
the three different files need to be encoded three times individually.
With SVC, the video files are “scalable” allowing the common
elements of the three different files to be stored as one single file.
This also means that the time spent encoding the files are cut
substantially, as the common elements in all three files need only be
encoded once.
Dr Lim Keng Pang, the head of the research team of
I2R working on the SVC initiative, said that SVC also similarly allowed
for the window size and frame rate of video files to be scalable. This
makes SVC a highly efficient and scalable video codec, and is
specifically suited for enabling high-quality video streaming on
smartphones and PDAs. The problem with current video streaming
technologies on mobile devices, he added, was that the video codec was
not powerful enough, leading to poor video quality, slow frame rates,
small viewing windows and jerky motions. H.264 with SVC will solve the
problem, he added.
While the standards for H.264 have already been
set, the SVC extensions are still in the process of standardisation.
That’s why all the big names are pushing hard for their various
components of the video codec to be accepted. Dr Lim added that I2R has
already submitted a few patented algorithms to the standards body.
In addition, Dr Lim’s team have also developed a sophisticated
encoding algorithm for the main H-264 video codec.
For more information, please contact
Dr Lim Keng Pang
Project Leader, I2R
DID 6874 4303
Email kplim@i2r.a-star.edu.sg
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RFID tags have been heralded as a great way to reduce counterfeiting of
products by tightening the supply chain. But how then do you ensure the
tags themselves are not fakes? The answer may well lie in a unique
microscopic “fingerprint” for tagging objects, develope d by two
researchers from the Institute of Materials Research & Engineering (IMRE),
Dr Adrian Burden and Dr Peter Moran.
Called Singular ID, the technology enables useful
tags to be made that are smaller than 1 mm. In one format, each tag
consists of a thin ceramic film in which are micro and nano-scale bar
magnets. The alignment, shape and size of the microscopic magnets forms
a unique magnetic field “pattern” that can be scanned by a reader.
This pattern provides a unique ‘fingerprint’ or means of
identification for the object to which it is attached. Because the
nanoscale patterns are formed randomly during the manufacturing process
and can arise from a vast
number of different patterns, no
one Singular ID tag is the same and it is prohibitively
difficult, if not impossible to replicate or make copies of the
fingerprint.
Its small size and copy-proof characteristics make
Singular ID a perfect candidate for tagging items of value as a mark of
authenticity. In addition, its low cost, estimated to be as low as half
a US cent per tag in high volume production, makes it very viable in a
number of market sectors
Dr Burden said that the Singular ID tags can be
tailored to label any
object, though the initial focus is on medical & pharmaceutical
products and luxury goods. “With
increasing concerns about health and global counterfeiting, people want
to make sure that the medicines, syringes, operating theatre consumables
and other similar products are genuine, sterile and properly made.
Singular ID technology offers a compelling solution for this issue. ,”
said Dr Burden.
Singular ID tags can either be placed overtly on
labels or if subtlety is preferred, be placed directly into the products
or the packaging, thus making them invisible to the naked eye.
Singular ID is the result of over two years of
research at IMRE. Two patents have been filed and the researchers are
now seeking to commercialise their invention.
The Singular ID technology has already received the widespread attention
from industry. Last year, it was selected as one of the finalists of the
Far Eastern Economic Review’s Asia Innovation Awards. Dr Burden and
Moran also received the runners-up award in the Roland Berger-INSEAD
Business Plan Competition last year.
For more information, please contact
Dr Adrian Burden
DID 6874 8350
Email adrian_pb@imre.a-star.edu.sg
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