CyOptics, Smarter, smaller, cheaper

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

CyOptics is combining priceless industry know-how with high-tech automation to win customers
in new markets, as CEO Ed Coringrato and colleagues told Bernie Sheehan

Optical data transmission rates of 80 gigabits per second were recently demonstrated by CyOptics, in collaboration with Cray Inc. The unprecedented rates were achieved using CyOptics’ next-generation uncooled InP (indium phosphide) laser technology, Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and high-precision automated assembly processes. The company’s breakthrough will help Cray develop supercomputers capable of one petaflop (million billion calculations per second) by 2010.

The CyOptics team consists of industry veterans who have played key roles at Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies. “Our company has a rich history. Several members of our team today are some of the founders of the indium phosphide industry,” explains Bryan Segner, director of wafer-fabrication engineering and operations. “It’s a big advantage; we have many billions of hours of high-reliability devices in the field.”

Founded in 1999, CyOptics designs, manufactures, and sells optical components: InP chips and laser and detector components for broadband access, metro and long-haul communications systems. It is an industry leader in next-generation optical engines that are five times smaller than the current industry standard components.

CyOptics’ wafer/chip fabrication operations are based in Lehigh Valley, PA, and its automated packaging and testing operations are located at Matamoros, Mexico, where it employs 180 people. According to its customers’ needs, the company will manufacture the base laser chip (frequently smaller than a grain of salt), mount it on a carrier, or assemble it in a package and produce it in volume. “We also sell our design and manufacturing services, which helps to leverage a lot of our technology in non-traditional markets. It’s a growing part of the business,” says Ed Coringrato, president and CEO. “Historically we’ve sold into the telecoms industry, system OEMs such as Lucent and Siemens. But now we’re also expanding into the datacom, defense, and computing industries which need high-speed optical components.”

CyOptics has been the most highly automated manufacturer in the industry since the 1990s, investing hundreds of millions of dollars. “On the processing and assembly side the technology has been developed internally from commercially available robots and instruments,” explains Jim Dormer, vice president for manufacturing processes development. “We need very accurate placement tolerances and this gives us the nano-capability which is the industry buzz at the moment. We have now established an automated capability which allows us to introduce new families of products, options, or features from the same base level. It’s a very flexible equipment set.”

Lean techniques, including 5S, kaizen and six sigma, have been adopted over the years. In addition, CyOptics has developed its own multi-step process with internal statistical experts to measure and test equipment performance. For example, in wafer fabrication, it has drawn heavily on SPC (Statistical Process Control). “Part of our ongoing efforts is the design of experiments taking a variety of parameters and analysing them to optimise processes in the future,” explains Bryan Segner. “Our engineering and operations teams are trained in the design of experiments and we have hundreds of control charts showing critical parameters, which are monitored on a daily basis. We fabricate very complex devices involving several hundred steps, therefore one small change could lead to product failure. Use of these techniques is how we maintain a high yield.”

The culture of continuous improvement is also demonstrated by CyOptics’ commitment to on-line, real time data acquisition and analysis. “We’ve developed our own Oracle database to make our products better,” says Dormer. “Almost all our processes are paperless. Our automated robots interact with, retrieve and put back parametric data into the database.” Metrics tracked include yield, cycle time, scrap rate, rework, documentation, equipment utilization, training, and product delivery.

“Looking ahead, there are two challenges,” says Coringrato. “One is the classic ‘more for less’ —customers want a better performance at a lower cost. The technology roadmap has allowed us to do that, to make products five times smaller than previous generation, and we’re now moving to 2x reduction, lower power consumption and the ability to transmit over longer distances without a cooler.

The overarching challenge for CyOptics, however, is the ongoing restructuring of the telecoms market after the recent “nuclear winter.” As part of the industry consolidation, CyOptics has recently acquired CENiX (2003) and TriQuint Semicondutor’s Optoelectronics Division (2005). It is building on their equipment sets as well as developing its methodology of managing yields. “Basically we’re bringing back together the people and capability that existed in the Bell Laboratories days.”

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