MEMS | REPORT
<< Figure 1:Te MEMS
Industry Commercialization Report Card was created in 1998 and annually provides an objective measurement using a market research approach of the MEMS
industry’s performance against 14 critical success factors.
Source: Roger Grace Associates. >>
The Problem It is interesting to note that MEMS technology established vis-à-vis the discovery of the piezoresistive effect at Bell Laboratories in 1955 by Charles Smith is approximately the same ‘age’ as Integrated Circuit (IC) technology established vis-à-vis the semiconductor effect that was discovered at the same laboratory by Bardeen et al. only a few years earlier. More importantly however, the total sales of MEMS as reported by numerous groups in 1998 was approximately 1/25th of the sales of ICs at the time of the publishing of the first Report Card. The MEMS market for 2013 has been reported by several organisations to be approximately $10 Billion (US) whereas Gartner Research has reported that that total IC market for 2013 was $312.0 Billion (US) approximately a 30:1 ratio. The positive news here is that the MEMS market has been reported to be growing over the past several years at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in the 15-20% range (primarily fueled by mobile phones/tablets and consumer products) whereas the IC market has recently fluctuated $299.9 Billion (US) in 2012 and $307.8 Billion (US) in 2011 (per Gartner Research). However, the question still remains: why is there still such a disparity in the market sizes? The Report Card’s raison d’être is to help address this seeming paradox.
Research Methodology Questionnaires were emailed to selected individuals in the Roger Grace Associates database who have and continue to play major roles in the MEMS commercialisation process. These ‘expert’ participants represented a broad range of MEMS manufacturers, users of MEMS as well as individuals who represent companies engaged in MEMS infrastructure e.g. foundries, design software and equipment providers. Academics were not included in the research universe. The participants represented a worldwide universe with the majority of the respondents coming from the US and Europe. The members of the research universe were asked to rate the 14 critical success factors/topics using grades ‘A’ to ‘D’ using pluses and minuses where applicable. Additionally, they were asked to provide specific comments a.k.a. ‘verbatims’ as to the rationale of their assigned grades. The 85 respondents had a collective experience of over 1700 years averaging out to
approximately 20 years per respondent. Certainly this was an exceptionally well-experienced and well-qualified group of participants, a.ka. ‘experts’. This research approach, known as ‘Delphi’ was developed by Project Rand during the 1950s and 60s by Olaf Helmer, Norman Dalkey and Nicholas Rescher. It provides the best possible insight into a research topic where a statistically significant/projectionable approach is not feasible.
Results Figure 1 provides the letter grade results of the 2013 MEMS Commercialization Report Card on a yearly basis from 1998 to 2013. It also provides the change in grade from 2012 to 2013 as well as the standard deviation of the grades in 2013. A direct comparison between the 2012 grades and the 2013 grades is given in figure 2. The 2013 MEMS Commercialization Report Card provided an overall grade of B- to the 14 critical success factors for MEMS commercialisation. The overall grade did not change from the B-grades of 2010, 2011 and 2012 (figure 3). More important, however, was the change in the individual grades.
Out of the 14 topics, Established Infrastructure had the highest grade of A- and Venture Capital Attraction had the lowest grade of D+. Five topics increased one grade level, no topics decreased in their grade level and nine topics remained constant.
Increasing one grade level from 2012 were Profitability (C+), Marketing (B-), Design for Manufacturing (B), Industry Roadmap (C+) and Standards (C+). The standard deviations based on the approximately 85 responses for each topic went from a high of 1.9 for Creation of Wealth to 1.4 for Market Research. The grades established that Venture Capital Attraction continues to need major improvement and may be critical items in restraining the industry from realising its true potential. Venture Capital Attraction has been in the D category since 2009 when the worldwide crises hit our economy and regrettably venture capital funds have been targetted to software and social media startups.
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44 | commercial micro manufacturing international Vol 7 No.4
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