Detection Technology Oy (DT) designs, manufactures and markets unique
light and radiation detection components and modules. With 15 employees
in Finland and 15 in its subsidiaries in China and Hong Kong, DT achieved
the total sales of 1.8 million EUR in 1999.
Founded in 1991, DT concentrates on industrial and medical markets
for light and radiation detectors. DT has thorough experience in silicon
processing and encapsulation. It has also considerable knowledge in
analogue ASIC and PCB design.
DT has two main product groups: light and radiation detector components
and detector modules. Detector components include silicon photodiodes
and amplifiers. The detector modules include x-ray linear array detectors
and customer specific modules. The application areas for DT's products
include paper and pulp manufacturing, foodstuff quality control, medical
radiology, analytical chemistry and scientific applications. The object
of this AE is the x-ray linear array detectors.
The objective is to improve this product by making its resolution (performance)
better and lowering the manufacturing costs. The resolution of the old
product is 2.5 mm and the new product 0.8 mm or 0.4 mm. The manufacturing
costs of the product were at the same time lowered 43%. The resolution
improvement will open completely new markets for this product group,
for example in the demanding food quality control, where companies want
to detect foreign objects, such as metal wires, stones and glass particles,
in food. The CoB technology gave the capability of glass particle detection.
The old technology is not suitable for making high-resolution detector
arrays required in this field. Lowering the manufacturing costs will
increase the profits and make the price competition easier for DT.
Chip-on-Board PCB was chosen as the technology for the new detector
array. The AE duration was 14.5 months and the costs were approximately
90 kEUR, from which EU cover 86 kEUR. The payback period for this AE
is very short, only 8 months and the ROI can is estimated to be 5 333%.
The ROI is based on 5 years product lifetime. One must also take into
account that the ASIC development (approximately 60 kEUR) was not part
of this AE, but conducted as own development work, so the cost of that
is not taken into account in these calculations.
The mixed-signal ASIC chip to be placed on-board has been designed
internally during the project. The Chip-on-Board technology will definitely
be later implemented to DT's other products making also them more competitive.
During the project DT acquired a great amount of knowledge and skills,
which it did not possess before the AE. DT considered the project very
successful.
