MCC Strategic Technology Tours (STTs) are consortial initiatives, driven by the requirements and efforts of the researchers and research managers at MCC member firms who join our STT benchmarking teams. This report of findings on MEMS and microsystems in Europe, which derives from a March 1999 MCC Strategic Technology Tour to Europe, is the product of a team effort involving six MCC member firms working with MCC staff. Members of the MCC team that conducted the Strategic Technology Tour in MEMS and Microsystems in Europe were:
MCC Global Technology Services appreciates the efforts of the team members, both on the ground in Europe and in providing observations and inputs which have helped guide the preparation of this report. Additional detail on the backgrounds of the STT team members appears in Appendix 1 of this report.
The MCC Strategic Technology Tour to Europe in MEMS and Microsystems was undertaken with financial co-sponsorship provided by WTEC at Loyola College under its cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. In addition to funding for the Strategic Technology Tour and associated technology evaluation work, WTEC contributed advice to MCC on the conduct of the STT, based on its own long experience in organizing technology evaluation panels, and organized a two-day workshop held in Washington, DC for dissemination and discussion of STT findings.
MCC sincerely appreciates the cooperation of host representatives in Europe who agreed to meet with our STT team for presentations and mutual discussion of key trends in MEMS and microsystems. The European companies, universities, and research institutes that hosted our group are identified in the body of this report.
Finally, I would like to thank the colleagues at MCC who worked to make this Strategic Technology Tour a success: Claude Hilbert, Technical Manager on the MCC technical staff; Andrew Jacobson, Coordinator in MCC Business Development; and Diane Culp, Research Associate in MCC Global Technology Services.
Howard Curtis
Director, MCC Global Technology Services
Austin, Texas