ficonTEC Service GmbH of Achim, Germany, has announced a comprehensive modernization of their product strategy. The new strategy allows ficonTEC to properly address increasing customer focus on in-line production line applications, while at the same time retaining continuity for existing customers, commitments and projects with current stand-alone machines.
\nInitially, new ASSEMBLY machine systems, utilizing a newly-designed housing format and state-of-the-art feed-in\/out capabilities, will be offered in specific \u2018in-line\u2019 configurations for production line applications. The new machines primarily address increasing customer demand for greater versatility together with higher volume requirements for photonic device assembly. However, as the new housing format has already been designed to be compatible with other ficonTEC assembly and production machine types (as currently available in ficonTEC\u2019s stand-alone machine systems), the in-line product portfolio can be readily and flexibly expanded to suit individual customer production needs.<\/p>\n
The new machine format can be supplied either individually as a versatile production cell designed to slot into an existing or proposed production line, or as task-optimized machine segments comprising several different systems. In principal, even extended production line segments can be envisaged, encompassing a range of production processes as required for photonics assembly, packaging and test.<\/p>\n
While retaining all of the popular customer-oriented features of ficonTEC\u2019s existing stand-alone systems \u2013 including individual customization options and process optimization via collaborative R&D \u2013 the new in-line systems additionally provide much improved support for high-volume production requirements, for example, for that associated with the highly visible transition to integrated photonics approaches for component manufacturing.<\/p>\n
For customers and key activities requiring continuity with previous product lines, the entire range of current machine systems \u2013 including ASSEMBLY, FIBER, BOND, CUSTOM, TEST, INSPECTION, STACK and WELDER stand-alone systems, as well as individual table-top units and desktop modules \u2013 will continue to be available indefinitely. All stand-alone products remain configurable with any number of ficonTEC\u2019s proprietary assembly and test modules as well as industry-recognized technologies and capabilities. They will also continue to benefit from improvements in ficonTEC\u2019s successful process control software.
\nThis update also forms the basis for ficonTEC’s long-term product platform strategy leading well in to the next decade, in that all current stand-alone products will eventually transition to the new housing format. Naturally, stand-alone operability will remain as a standard machine option where required by the customer process, but the new format will allow additional benefits with regards to inter-operability and servicing.<\/p>\n
ficonTEC\u2019s easy-to-use but nonetheless sophisticated process control software will continue to tie everything together, providing a consistent look & feel across all products, old and new. However, the new in-line products do allow greater advantage to be taken of the remote monitoring and revision control features already built-in to the software, for example, where a revision control server provides both process optimization and synchronization across multiple machine operating in parallel production lines.<\/p>\n