Next to computer
chips, the most important enabling components of the electronic
revolution are undoubtedly lasers and other high-tech
light-emitting devices.
Laser technology has
created a host of manufacturing opportunities for high-tech
companies in many advance nations. In Germany, for instance,
manufacturers are particularly strong in laser-based cutting
devices, which in various forms are now widely used everywhere from
shipyards to hospital operating theatres.
The Germans are also
leaders in laser-based welding devices, which, like the cutting
devices, harness the ability of gas-based lasers to concentrate
energy in a very focused way. The ability is a major advantage in
dealing with metals that boast both high conductivity and a high
melting point. Aluminum for example, was notoriously difficult to
weld effectively until lasers came along.
The Japanese are key
players in several of the most important areas of the laser
business. They are strong in cutting devices, for instance. They
are also leaders in laser based precision instruments. Tokyo based
Komatsu, for instance, is now challenging Cymer in making lasers
for the stepper industry.
Perhaps the most
ultimate success story of the Japanese laser industry is Sony
Corporation. Sony's specialty is laser diodes, a product category
it entirely dominated worldwide.
Laser diodes are
tiny devices that are most familiar as the key enabling components
in compact disk players, CD-ROMS, and digital videodisc players.
They are also crucial in laser printers. They are key enabling
components in the telecommunication industry, where they are used
to send pulses of light through optical fibre
networks.
Sony got its start
in the industry as recently as the early 1980s and has been on a
path of breakneck growth ever since. On the strength of an
estimated threefold increase in its factory workforce, it has
expanded its monthly output from less then 300,000 units in 1982,
to 14 million units in 1998.
It has been powered
in part by Sony's success in maximizing its yield- the proportion
of flaw free units in its total production.
Sony's yield
achievement alone accounts for a nearly five-fold boost in labour
productivity. On top of this, the company has achieved other major
productivity improvements thanks, for instance, to massive
investments in robot driven automation systems.
Along the way the
company has implemented a major qualitative improvement in its
products by both shrinking its size and boosting its
performance.
The results can be
seen in consumer markets around the world. Sony's success in honing
its laser diode production know-helps explain why CD players are
now everywhere-
not only in the first and second worlds but increasingly even in
the third world. They are evidently far more numerous then the
record players that they superseded. Since CD players were first
sold in 1982, they have achieved total cumulative sales of a
phenomenal 550 million units- one for every ten residents on the
planet.
One major
breakthrough lately has been in the manufacture of blue lasers.
These had hitherto been unavailable only in huge gas-based versions
that cost about $50,000 each. Now Nichia Chemical Industries of
Anan, Japan, has developed tiny blue laser diodes based on the
semiconducting material gallium nitride that are expected
eventually to be mass produced for less then $2 dollars a
piece.
If blue lasers
become widely available, they will enable the information industry
to pack four to five times as much information onto CD platters.
This is just the beginning of the possibilities of blue lasers.
Engineers believe that down the road blue lasers may play a crucial
role in a host of applications, in everything from colour fax
machines and copiers to ultra-high-capacity optical fibre
networks.
