Minimizing time to market and efficiently transitioning products from R&D to production is a vital element for success in the MEMS industry. We recently spoke with Henne van Heeren, founder of EnablingM3, a consulting company with a focus on MEMS commercialization, about transition costs, possible pitfalls and tips to ensure that the process goes smoothly.
MEMS Investor Journal: In your experience, what are the main pitfalls which companies experience when they take their technology from prototype to production?
Henne van Heeren: In the first place, the time needed for their customers to develop the application. However interesting the new product, it is not always first priority for the customer and they also need the time to get used to it. In the second place, the time needed to adapt the product to the application. Intimate contact with the potential customers is therefore essential. It helps also if the design cycles are as short as possible, and modification of the design can be done without much cost. Currently there is a huge gap between the way prototypes are made and the way fabrication takes place. Materials and technologies suited for the one doesn’t fit the other.
MEMS Investor Journal: In the past few years, which MEMS startup projects at both small startups and large companies have done an especially good job with this transition? Can you give a few specific examples?
Henne van Heeren: enablingMNT looked recently at startups in the field of medical products, and we noticed that there isn’t much difference between them in terms of time to market, although their products are very different and the background of the entrepreneurs also differs widely. Outside of the medical field, I think Discera was very fast in entering the market, Cavendish Kinetics took more time, but the fact that they developed strictly into high volume electronic technologies is giving them a strong position.
MEMS Investor Journal: What are some of the worst cases you’ve seen?
Henne van Heeren: For obvious reasons I prefer not to go in to much details here. The worst mistakes are always based on overestimation of the power of new products and lack of knowledge of what is going on in other companies. Products fitting into some niche position in the market are often presented as the general solution.
MEMS Investor Journal: In Europe, which MEMS foundries do you think are best at transitioning MEMS and microsystems products from prototype to production? What about in North America?
Henne van Heeren: I think Silex and Colibrys are doing a very good job here in Europe. The Tronics and Qinetic combination is interesting for the development of sensors into standard processes. On the other side of the ocean IMT and Dalsa are doing very well.
MEMS Investor Journal: How much should a company expect to spend on taking a MEMS technology from the lab to production?
Henne van Heeren: If you take only the cost of transferring the technology from a prototyping facility to a fab where they have all of the processes available, the startup cost will be somewhere between 25,000 and 75,000 euro, assuming there are no design or process changes during the transfer. As a part of the whole cost of transferring a product to the market, which is usually $10-25 million, these costs are not very high. If the fab needs to develop new processes or install new equipment, costs will be substantially higher. So it’s important to think carefully of your design and develop into one of the standard MEMS processes.
MEMS Investor Journal: What are some of the MEMS technologies which are currently the best candidates to be taken from lab to the foundry?
Henne van Heeren: A very interesting technology now being developed is thin film encapsulation. Compared to wafer bonding it is potentially cheaper, produces thinner dies and fits better into the standard packaging process.
I have a feeling that decreasing the real estate needed for the MEMS structures in sensors will become a new focal point. This will help making the products cheaper and the processes easier to integrate into CMOS.
In general, many of the interesting applications that will have a huge impact are not quite MEMS technologies per se, but are technologies that will shorten the design cycles such as maskless lithography and printing of electronics.
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After studying chemistry at the University of Utrecht, Mr. Van Heeren worked at the University of Delft, on rapid solidification of metals. He then joined Philips Electronics as a Development Engineer. He became responsible for the transfer and industrialisation of the thin film magnetic heads technology from the Philips Research facilities to the business unit. As the foundry production manager he extended the clean room, purchased equipment, hired staff and transformed the production organisation from a low volume work shop to a three shift high volume facility.
To expand the scope of the business, Mr. Van Heeren developed and executed a strategy for expansion of MST/MEMS activities and several new processes and products were introduced into the organisation. As a Business Development Manager he also changed the MST activity from a sideline effort to the business core.
Currently Mr. Van Heeren is working with his own company, EnablingM3, as a consultant and market researcher in the field of micro and nanotechnology. His principal activity is assisting start up organizations in the process of industrialization and commercialization. He is also actively involved in the enablingMNT group which published several reports on the Micro and Nano technology supply chain. He contributed two chapters to the MANCEF roadmap on micro and nanotechnologies and was a member of the core team that created the NEXUS market review on MST/MEMS.
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