Low-cost manufacturing is key to the future of photonics
Since the telecoms crash, component prices have dropped by as much as 40%, largely due to excess inventory. Industry sources suggest that prices are likely to remain at this level even when market demand returns, because growth sectors such as metro and access applications will be very price sensitive. These lower prices will squeeze profit margins if companies cannot cut manufacturing costs. As a result, implementing strategies to reduce costs, such as design for manufacture and automating assembly processes, is vital.
David Krohn, a managing partner of Light Wave Venture, the investment company that jointly organized the one-and-a-half day workshop with the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA), summarized the situation. "If we want to make photonics much more pervasive, we need to get the [manufacturing] costs down by about 90%," he said. "To be really serious about manufacturing, you have to address a lot of issues facing the industry, or be out of business in two years time."
Krohn s comments set the tone for the meeting at Boston University, which featured a series of presentations by vendors, component manufacturers and network providers. Breakout sessions were incorporated to discuss a roadmap for the photonics manufacturing industry over the next five years.
The OIDA s executive director, Fred Welsh, believes that a roadmap is critical to identifying cost-cutting opportunities. He said that during a previous workshop on low-cost manufacturing, held during Strategies Unlimited s "Strategies in Optical Manufacturing" conference, a number of recurring themes led to the development of a prototype roadmap. This formed part of the discussion at the Boston meeting (see table).
"The roadmap outlines several areas that need attention," said Welsh. "The design for manufacturing process is one aspect the industry has not paid enough attention to. Also, there s too much variation in today s components to realistically expect to get more standardized packaging sooner rather than later."
Welsh says that in the longer term the industry needs a family of packages similar to those in the semiconductor industry, so that manufacturing and test equipment makers, as well as contract manufacturers, can take advantage of industry volumes.
"Another important aspect is how to automate appropriate parts of the production process," he added. "Making headway on the design for manufacturing and standard packages will help us achieve consistent production through automation." Welsh suggested taking a semi-automated approach for the time being to improve yield, consistency and quality, and also to emphasize designing for larger scale production and manufacturing.
Design for manufacturing
Mark Garlock of Kodak gave a presentation describing the company s use of design for manufacturing and assembly. Kodak employs simulation packages and design services that provide information on problem areas early in the design process, and enable predictions that allow assembly costs to be accurately predicted and met.
"We iterate designs early and often in the process, using design for manufacturing at the conception and design phases," said Garlock. He stressed that to be effective, the design for manufacture process must be involved before the prototype phase.
Hybrid wafer-level integration
A talk from Digital Optics compared optical sub-assemblies manufactured using current discrete methods, with the company s approach that uses micro-optical sub-assemblies. Kevin Drehmer, president of Digital Optics, described their photonic chip technology, which involves photolithographic etching of 6 inch wafers to produce passive components. The wafers are bonded into a stack and electrical contacts etched in. The stack can then be flip-chip bonded to active components such as lasers and detectors, and then diced into chips. The optics can also be attached to the wafer stack. The wafers have the advantage that they can be very accurately processed (
