Your success in a competitive and fast moving market

The market evolves at a fast pace, competition gets keener. Learn more about how you can reduce your time to market and increase your yield by optimizing materials and materials combinations.

Fast moving markets

The electronics markets are dynamic – a short time to market for new products becomes a crucial sales advantage, expectations on device features increase and competition on price gets tougher.

Only those who succeed to optimize design and processes, shorten development cycles, bring costs down and reduce risks in all aspects can compete with the best. To fulfill all requirements at best possible yield is the major goal of a successful market player.

Process simplification

Process simplification

In the electronics market there is a need for the simplification of processes, in particular to reduce the total costs of manufacture. Everybody aims for higher yield with lower costs and minimized risks.

New materials and materials combinations can enable us to simplify your processes. What may sound straightforward needs to be fully understood. Simplifying an old, existing, manufacturing process itself without materials consideration, may be easier and initially cost effective; but if this leads to quality issues, even only a decimal of the ppm rate, the total unexpected extra costs can be considerable. Therefore, process reliability and full process capability must be ensured.

Risks for manufacturing are clear; weak points in the technical processes that lead to quality problems, sourcing problems for materials, delivery delays of suppliers, volatile international commodity markets (especially for precious metals), and many more.

This is why process simplification requires a very high level of expertise and experience. It starts with knowledge about materials and their compatibility in materials combinations. Then, all the relevant manufacturing process steps and the response of the materials combinations need to be tested thoroughly, in realistic conditions.

This can be done in an Application Center. If specialist knowledge in the field of materials, processing and application testing come together, it becomes possible to solve the technical challenges. The result is a pre-qualified materials system where materials are perfectly matched together and process windows are defined for a robust and reliable assembly process for our customer.

Short times to market

Short times to market

The speed of innovation is particularly high in electronics and it has considerably increased over the last decades.

In order to exceed the competition, it is crucial to be a first mover – or at least a fast follower. Ideally one can predict and manufacture a future product demand well before the competition realizes the need and catches up. To generate such creative ideas, your own resources can be extended by adding the diversified perspectives and skills of partners.

Time efficient development projects have a significant impact on the costs of a product and on the achievable margin in cost driven markets. Lengthy projects are expensive and the faster a new product is launched, the sooner it will contribute to cash flow. Time to market can be decreased significantly by using the innovational strength of partners. With their specific expertise in their own field of competence, they can unleash better solutions in shorter time.

A materials specialist like Heraeus has the capability to match all materials in a system perfectly to each other and to optimize all interfaces between the materials in order to achieve a maximum of system performance and reliability. Such a developed and pre-tested materials system enables your team to focus more on other key development tasks.

Supply chain reliability

Supply chain reliability

The reduction of internal risk is calculable as long as it lies within your own scope. In reality many of the risks facing a business depend on the efficiency and suitability of external partners. Careful selection is crucial.

  • Is the partner an established player in the industry?
  • Is his financial background sound and can he afford the resources for necessary investments?
  • How fast can an expert be on site to contribute to a fast and efficient solution of any issues?
  • Does he offer redundant options in case of interruptions in the main supply pipeline?
  • Is he able to contribute in an innovative and creative way to new unexpected challenges?

A high level of partnership is necessary to secure a high level of supply chain reliability. Find out more how this kind of partnership turns into solid advantages in competitiveness.