When the semiconductor industry entered in the world of lighting they came with their “chip” mindset: show off the technology, share the specs and developers will do the rest. Of course, this has not been the case for the lighting industry which has a decidedly “analog” mindset…
LED industry learns to earn lighting sales
ISSUE N°9 Industry Review, October 1, 2013In the quarter that Ralph Tuttle joined Durham, North Carolina’s Cree, 17 years ago, the company shipped a million LED chips. “At that time we thought ‘Wow, we are a really big company now’,” recalled Tuttle, who’s now Cree’s Applications Engineering Manager. “Today we ship more LED chips than that in a day.” Though LED manufacturers in general have paralleled this meteoric growth, ramping to such volumes has been no easy feat. And now the general lighting `holy grail’ the industry has been questing for is fi nally within reach, bringing with it the prospect of yet higher output volumes. But success is never assured for any company. To take full advantage of the opportunity to fulfi ll their lighting destiny, each LED producer must adopt the best manufacturing technologies, organisational tools, and market outlook for the task ahead.