Profitless Prosperity
Tom Mariano, vice president of the Industrial Equipment Practice at software firm Foliage (Burlington, Mass.), argues that there are as-yet unexploited areas of R&D efficiency that semiconductor equipment companies can take advantage of, including automated testing and product line architectures (PLAs). "With the promise of PLAs comes the promise of rapid new product development. Consolidated PLAs mean that the underlying structure and technologies stay the same from product to product, and only the higher level product 'personality' needs to change," Mariano writes in the September issue of Semiconductor International.