EV Group (EVG) of St Florian, Austria, a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system), nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, has completed its newly expanded cleanroom IV facility.
As part of its long-term growth strategy to address high-volume tool orders and speed time to market for its worldwide customer base, EVG has doubled its cleanroom space for process development and pilot-production services. In addition, it has increased the size of its application labs, added new R&D facilities for internal tool development and testing, and opened a new customer and employee training center.
In tandem with the cleanroom expansion, EVG has increased the number of fully automated high-volume manufacturing (HVM) systems (for different wafer sizes) to strengthen its customer demonstration and process development capabilities. While manufacturing and product development are centralized at EVG's corporate headquarters, technology and process development teams in Austria work closely with the firm's subsidiaries in Tempe, AZ and Albany, NY in the USA, Yokohama and Fukuoka in Japan, Seoul in South Korea, and Chung-Li in Taiwan, where additional application labs and cleanroom facilities are available for onsite customer demonstration and technology process development. EVG says that it works closely with leading universities and R&D institutes worldwide, and plays a key role in industry associations and consortia to progress R&D on semiconductors, MEMS, light-emitting diodes and other high-tech devices.
The new customer and employee training center provides several new rooms for instructional training courses, as well as a large number of manual and automated EVG tools for training. The new training center provides additional flexibility and increased capability for customers and employees worldwide who regularly attend training courses on EVG technologies, manufacturing processes, products and software, as well as equipment operation.
Earlier this year, the addition of a manufacturing facility doubling the production floor space marked the completion of the first phase of EVG's long-term expansion plans. Already contributing to continued, steady growth from the beginning of 2012, EVG has increased its order intake in fiscal 2012 (to end-September 2012) by 5% over fiscal 2011, while increasing revenue by 20%. Also, in the last 12 months EVG has added more than 100 new staff (to a current total of about 600 worldwide) and continues to recruit new employees in all departments.
