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1 Flexible Electronics and the Manufacturing Challenge
Pages 3-40

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From page 3...
... Federal Reserve data reproduced in SCDigest Editorial Staff, "Supply Chain News: How Is US Manufacturing Doing Five Years After the Great Recession? " Supply Chain Digest, April 10, 2013.
From page 4...
... to coordinate investments in manufacturing by governments, universities, and industry.6 In 2012, the Administration announced that it would create 15 manufacturing research institutes around the country to strengthen U.S. manufacturing infrastructure, the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI)
From page 5...
... 12  MIT, "U.S. Re-Shoring: A Turning Point," MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation and Supply Chain Digest (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2012)
From page 6...
... 16  "More Companies Making Commitments to Made in the USA," Bucks County Courier Times, June 30, 2013. A 2013 study by the MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation cited a survey of companies that found that one-third of them were considering "reshoring" offshore manufacturing into the United States and that 15 percent were "definitively" planning to do so (ibid)
From page 7...
... 22  Adam Page and Smithers Pira, "Market for Organic and Printed Electronics," in OE-A, Organic and Printed Electronics (2013) , 34; IDTechEx, "Printed, Flexible and Organic Electronics Sees 15.3% CAGR," Printed Electronics World, May 15, 2013.
From page 8...
... The U.S. Army and Air Force and other elements of the defense establishment have been supporting the development of flexible displays for military and dual-use appli­ations for more than a decade, and other federal c 24  IBIS World, Out of Print: The Industry Struggles as Printed Media Lose Consumers to Web, A ­ ugust 2012; "Gravure Makes Inroads in Printed Electronics," Printed Electronics Now, February 2011; "Printed Electronics: Fexo and Screen," Printed Electronics Now, February 2009; "A New Industry Shapes the Future of Printing," Printed Electronics Now, December 2008.
From page 9...
... firms has been precompetitive. The technological hurdles to commercial applications in the form of new products and processes have proven sufficiently daunting worldwide that they have confounded numerous optimistic forecasts of industry growth.27 Repeated delays in commercialization of flexible electronics technologies attributable to materials and manufacturing challenges have affected large established electronics firms as well as startups and have occurred in all of the geographic regions examined in this study.
From page 10...
... government is investing in R&D relevant to flexible electronics through a number of institutional channels, and several states are making significant commitments to R&D, cumulative government financial support in the United States falls short of government funding in this field in Europe and East Asia. Perhaps most significantly, while the United States has developed an onshore supply chain to support flexible electronics manufacturing, no large U.S.-based champion has yet emerged that is prepared to engage in large-scale commercial manufacturing of products that integrate the various flexible and printed electronics technologies being developed by the U.S.
From page 11...
... research discoveries and technological advances in flexible electronics can be translated into significant onshore manufacturing capability and domestic manufacturing employment. The United States arguably has no peer in basic research in this field.
From page 12...
... 35 Technological advances are now enabling a degree of creativity in applied research of the kind traditionally associated with basic research -- a ­ henomenon p that is being exploited systematically in intermediate research organizations such as ­ urope's Fraunhofer institutes and IMEC and in leading companies such as E DuPont, ­ eneral Electric, Proctor and Gamble, and Intel.
From page 13...
... Equipment makers can test their machines on pilot lines in a factory environment.39 Although some of these capabilities are present 37  Ibid. A complementary perspective is provided by Michael Idelchik, GE's Vice President for Advanced Technologies at GE Global Research, who told an MIT task force on innovation that today's advanced industrial R&D involves "the management of concurrent, non-sequential interactions with multiple exchanges between scientists and engineers and manufacturing specialists and with the product passing back and forth between the hands of experts with fundamentally different competencies." He cited the example of GE's intermetallic turbine blades for the new GEnx engine.
From page 14...
... semiconductor industry accelerated dramatically.c aElias C Carayannis and James Gover, "The Sematech-Sandia National Laboratories Partnership: A Case Study," Technovation, 2002, 586.
From page 15...
... It wouldn't have hap­ pened without that expectation or cadence that Moore's Law provides." Larry Sumney, "The Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) : A Proven Means to Fund Relevant Research," in National Research Council, Future of Photovoltaic Manufacturing, 186.
From page 16...
... 42  Congressional Research Service, The Obama Administration's Proposal to Establish a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (January 29, 2014)
From page 17...
... and then what you see is the development of technology in these lower boxes, which include entrepreneurial activity, risk reduction technology methodolo gies, which include standards development and regulators and other things that 45  Infratechnologiesreduce risk, among other ways, by establishing industry norms, standards and benchmarks which ensure that a new product will "fix" or "interface" with other products in a given technology system. The development of such standards by Sematech -- and industry-government consortium -- with respect to semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials was critically important to the vendor base which supplied semiconductor manufacturers.
From page 18...
... [F] rom a government side it means that we should really start focusing on these generic technology issues.46 The global flexible electronics industry is in its infancy.
From page 19...
... East Asian efforts in flexible electronics are heavily concentrated in the area of displays for consumer use, holding out the prospect that a far broader U.S. approach, based on applications in areas such as medical devices, photovoltaics, lighting, and smart textiles, could be successful.
From page 20...
... Greene, Gene Hart, and Edward H Wagner, "Measuring and Improving Performance in Multicenter Research Consortia," JNCI Monographs 2005, no.
From page 21...
... LEARNING FROM THE SEMATECH EXPERIENCE Many industry and government leaders closely associated with the development of flexible electronics technologies advocate the establishment of a "­ ematech-style" industry-government manufacturing consortium to facilitate S the development of flexible electronics manufacturing competencies and the necessary tools and materials.51 That fact, and the reality that few other comparable 49  "After ten years of sustained efforts, Europe has now managed to create a leading position in R&D on OLAE (organic and large area electronics) , mainly thanks to R&D collaboration efforts between research institutes, SMEs and large companies established through the support of public funding." The FP7-ICT Coordination Action OPERA and EM Commission DG INFSO Unit G5 ­ Photonics," An " Overview of OLAE Innovation Clusters and Competence Centres (September 2011)
From page 22...
... Flexible Display Industry," Manufacturing & Technology News, May 2, 2003. 52  Kenneth Flamm and Qifei Wang, "Sematech Revisited; Assessing Consortium Impacts on Semi conductor R&D," in National Research Council, Securing the Future: Regional and National Programs to Support the Semiconductor Industry (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003)
From page 23...
... defense readiness in the Cold War.54 None of n these elements is present in flexible electronics. Moreover, although it is often overlooked, the initial implementation of Sematech itself -- despite the factors cited above -- proved so difficult that the appli­ ation of the Sematech model remains a challenge for even well-established c industries, to say nothing of newer industries such as flexible electronics.55 Cultural differences between companies exerted powerful centrifugal force at Sematech, and it is difficult to envision how they would not do so in future flexible electronics consortia of even more diverse members.56 A number of original Sematech members pulled out when the Sematech research agenda did not match their own objectives.57 Similar problems, writ large, are likely to confront consortia formed to implement a Sematech-style mission in flexible electronics, particularly given the diversity of potential technology paths.
From page 24...
... semiconductor industry in the 1980s and the flexible electronics industry of today, a number of aspects of the Sematech experience are relevant to the latter.59 The federal contribution to Sematech was matched by industry, whose top executives made a strong commitment to the consortium in terms of their own companies' resources and talent. Sematech included not only semiconductor manu­acturers, f but also equipment and materials suppliers, "who help[ed]
From page 25...
... Schaller, Technological Innovation in the Semiconductor Industry: A Case Study of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS)
From page 26...
... Technology roadmapping began within individual semiconductor companies in the late 1970s.66 Collective benchmarking by the industry first occurred in the context of the Defense Department's Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) program, launched in 1980, which was an Army/Navy/Air Force effort to develop semiconductors with military applications exclusively based on substrates made of silicon, the principal technology then in use in the commercial semiconductor industry.67 The Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC)
From page 27...
... An industry participant who took part in the SRC exercise later recalled that "from the very beginning there was general enthusiasm on talking about forecasting the future," and the discussion was so productive that "consensus on the future was easily reached." Schaller, Technological Innovation in the Semiconductor Industry, 444, citing telephone interview with Jim Daughton, Honeywell, August 4, 2000. 69  Sematech's startup team conducted an intense series of industry-government planning workshops in 1987 and 1988, which produced the "Black Book," a roadmap for achieving technological goals together with resources and business initiatives needed to achieve those goals.
From page 28...
... Beginning in 1998, the U.S. semiconductor industry expanded the roadmap process to include foreign participants, and the evolution of global semiconductor technology is now assessed pursuant to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS)
From page 29...
... meant that a single semiconductor-like equipment technology roadmap "would not be appropriate for PV."75 Full pursuit of the opportunities in this emerging field is likely to require multiple roadmaps, some of them quite divergent in technological terms with respect to materials and processes. 76 The role 74  Intel's Paolo Gargini, a participant in early semiconductor industry roadmapping exercises, r ­ecalls that the process was "dominated by many people who were highly theoretical, and I understood, after a while, that the motivation was to submit proposals to the government for funding, and one of the problems that came back from the government, the national labs, university and industry, would go and propose programs to the government, with completely different roadmaps.
From page 30...
... This helps to figure out what's going on and how to design these structures. Every company should benefit from that." National Research Council, Future of Photovoltaic Manufacturing, 117.
From page 31...
... , and so forth, so the major benefit of Sematech was really to help not the IC companies, but really, to help the equipment company come back to speed." "Oral History of Paolo Gargini," 27. 82  Dan Hutcheson, President of the consultancy VLSI Research, observed in 1993 that prior to Sematech "the semiconductor industry looked at the equipment industry like used-car salesmen.
From page 32...
... , observed that Sematech played a key role in developing an industry consensus supporting the CIM framework.88 85  Comments of Keat Rochford, Acting Director, Electronics and Electrical Engineering Labora tory, National Institute of Standards, "Measurement and Standards: The Role of NIST," in National Research Council, Future of Photovoltaic Manufacturing, 163. 86  Sematech (CIM)
From page 33...
... In 2009, Germany's research ministry BMBF sponsored a collaboration, MaDriX, by local firms to develop standards for the printed electronics industry. This effort involved €15 million, €8 million of which was provided by BMBF.
From page 34...
... A variety of cultural and institutional factors had historically inhibited working relationships between the semiconductor industry and the federal laboratories, notwithstanding the extraordinary resources and relevant competencies available at some federal facilities.98 Sematech played a significant 93  See Chapter 6, "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Develops Micro-Activator that Flexes Under Laser Light," Flexible Substrate, January 2013; "ORNL Develops Carbon Nanotube Conductive Coatings for Flexible Electronics," Flexible Substrate, September 2011.
From page 35...
... Sematech's collaborative approach to manufacturing challenges has enhanced the members' productivity and efficiency in numerous ways. A system of "blind benchmarking" enables companies to compare their performance metrics with those of other companies.101 "Equipment productivity teams are joint efforts by members to identify common problems with a tool, work together with the tool supplier, and share information about how to make a given tool perform more efficiently."102 There is no reason why closely comparable, if not identical, practices could not be applied in industry collaborations in flexible electronics.
From page 36...
... Failure to address workforce concerns will result in local manufacturers "looking elsewhere."103 Although the renaissance of the U.S. semiconductor industry is most commonly associated with Sematech, the education and training role of SRC, which was formed to support and coordinate relevant university-based research, was also important.
From page 37...
... Display Consortium, it encourages collaboration among companies, academia, and research organizations, and it funds R&D projects in the display supply chain. The scale of FlexTech is extremely modest by current international standards, with combined funding support from the Army and Air Force Research Laboratories of $6 million over three years, with matching industry cost-sharing.
From page 38...
... programs.107 Specifically, the committee examined the role of research consortia around the world to advance flexible electronics technologies, comparing their structure, focus, funding, and likely impact, in order to determine what appropriate steps the United States might consider to the develop the industry in the United States.108 This volume surveys flexible electronics developmental efforts under way in Europe, East Asia, and North America with a focus on government support. Chapter 2 summarizes the enormous promise of flexible electronics as well as the technological obstacles to realizing that promise.
From page 39...
... , which includes an extended appendix on leading manufacturing support programs in Asia and Europe. • Informed trade press, including publications such as Flexible Substrate, Plastic Electronics, The Emitter, Printed Electronics Now, Nanowerk, and Printed Electronics World.
From page 40...
... • Commercial data are limited and consist largely of forecasts -- inherently sub­ jective -- because this is a relatively new industry. • Articles, studies, or government white papers about relevant programs in East Asian countries are often not made public and are rarely published in English.


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