Castelletto Design and Industrial Center, Cornaredo (Milan) STMicroelectronics is a global independent semiconductor company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductor integrated circuits ("ICs") and discrete devices used in a wide variety of microelectronic applications, including telecommunications systems, computer systems, consumer products, automotive products and industrial automation and control systems. In 2000, ST's net revenues were US $7,813.2 million and net earnings were US $1,452.1 million. According to various independent market research data and semiconductor company reports, including Dataquest's annual preliminary ranking for 2000, STMicroelectronics is the seventh largest semiconductor company in the world.
The visit is organized in two parts: The first part is a presentation of about half an hour of the integrated circuits manufacturing process. The second part is a guided tour within the manufacturing plants. Visitors will be divided into small groups. Each group tour will last about 45 minutes.
The total travelling time is about two hours. Tour includes a lunch break.
08:30–15:30
Cascina Costa Plant and Vergiate Center (Varese) Agusta is an AgustaWestland company, the new joint company world’s second largest manufacturer of helicopters. The Company designs and manufactures several military and civilian helicopters, and enjoys the partnership with Bell to design and develop the Bell/Agusta BA609 tiltrotor, the first civil tiltrotor to be offered on the market.
The first part of the tour is at the Cascina Costa plant, near Varese. It includes the Agusta's Headquarters, facilities for production of gearboxes and other transmission components and test benches, and the Agusta Electro Avionic Integration Center, with software house, simulation systems and integration rigs. The approximate size of the plant is 875,786 square meters of which 121,342 covered, and there are 1932 employees.
The second part is at the center for operational and functional integration at Vergiate (Varese), 20 minutes far from Cascina Costa, where the phases of final assembly and subsequent flight tests of helicopters take place. The organization of this center purses the objective of managing, from both a technical and production point of view, the processes of industrialisation, installation and testing of electro-avionic systems. The Vergiate center features 841 employees and an approximate size of 1,344,472 square meters of which 90,992 covered.
The visit will last about 2 hours in Cascina Costa and 1 and half in Vergiate. The total travelling time will be about 2 hours. Tour includes a lunch break.
Is Micromachining Still a Dream or an Industrial Reality?
Bruno Murari, STMicroelectronics, Italy Micromachining has been a popular subject for research for many years, but with the exception of a few specialized devices it has not yet become an industrial reality. Today, however, the technology has advanced beyond the limits of laboratory demonstrations and is about to ramp up the scale of industrial production. This talk discusses the emerging MEMS technologies that address the problems of industrial scale application, examining aspects such as developing processes suitable for multiple applications, new methods of packaging and issues concerning testing and reliability. Practical examples of products designed for mass production are included to illustrate key issues in the talk.
Bruno Murari is the Director of the "Castelletto" Research and Development laboratories of STMicroelectronics at Cornaredo, near Milan, Italy. Born in Treviso (near Venice) in 1936, he graduated in Electrical Technology at the Pacinotti Technical Institute, Venezia-Mestre, in 1955, followed by a two-year postgraduate course in electronics at the Beltrami Institute, Milan. He joined SGS —now STMicroelectronics— in 1961, working first in the application laboratory and then in the linear IC design group. In 1972 he became head of linear IC design and development at the company's "Castelletto" laboratories on the outskirts of Milan, and in 1981 he also became plant manager for the Castelletto facility, which includes a pre-production wafer fab. Today he is responsible for all of the activities of this center, which focusses on the development of Smart Power BCD technology + MEMS technology + advanced design on Power IC's. He has personally designed 10 integrated circuits and has supervised the design of more than 1000 others. A major contributor to ST's leadership position in high power IC technology, Bruno Murari holds 60 patents concerning IC design and technology, has published more than 40 papers and contributed to the McGraw-Hill book Power Integrated Circuits (1985). He is also co-editor of the book Smart Power: Technologies and Applications, published in November 1995 by Springer-Verlag. Often he has been invited to present papers on power technology at conferences in the US, Europe and Japan and participate in panel discussion on this subject. He has also been Chairman of the European Solid-State Circuits Conference in 1991 and was a teacher in power IC Design course at the University of Pisa. In 1993 he was a finalist in the EDN Innovator of the Year award. In April 1995 he was awarded the European SEMI award for his contribution to power IC technology. On May 1st 1994 he was conferred the Maestro del Lavoro honor by the President of the Italian Republic and in October 1995 he received an honorary degree from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice for his role in the development of multidisciplinary IC technologies. Recently he is starting a new activity in Castelletto plant using micromachining for MEMS. Married with two sons, Bruno Murari enjoys skiing and is an expert in underwater fishing. Equally skilled as a designer of free-flight model aircraft, he has been three times Italian champion in individual model aircraft flying contests and also world champion in the team category.
An Open System Interconnection Model for Mechatronics
Steven Hung, Visteon Corporation, USA
The presence of intelligent, electronic control in conjunction with mechanical actuation has spread far beyond the industrial or commercial setting. Mechatronic systems have moved well beyond their industrial roots, and, today, mechatronics are very present in many consumer products. The markets for growth in the presence of mechatronics have long presented many potential technology development synergies between military, industrial, commercial, and consumer product development arenas. The pace of actual growth in the presence of mechatronics, on the other hand, appears slow in light of the fact that many enabling technologies have been in use for many years in various product areas. The automotive system and industrial technology development arenas serve as an excellent example of a pair of synergistic mechatronic development areas. Many of the technologies that will enable development of safe, reliable new automotive mechatronics have been staples of industrial mechatronics for years. Many automotive implementations of technologies, meanwhile, can perform as well as industrial counterparts at orders of magnitude lower cost. Improved exchange of perspectives can accelerate development of automotive mechatronics and, concurrently, motivate changes in industrial implementation philosophies that can substantially lower industrial mechatronic system costs. Missing, however, is a topological model, such as the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model of ISO/IEC 7498, which would give developers a common reference basis when discussing application requirements and when comparing the viabilities of transplant technologies or architectures under consideration. The OSI basic reference model has helped streamline such discussions in the software and computer network communication industry: the mechatronics community could well afford a similar enabling reference. This presentation will begin with a discussion of why automotive and industrial mechatronics, as an exemplary pairing, have evolved in different directions. It will then proceed through a brief description of how technology developments are enabling a convergence of those directions, and, finally, note how an enabler of the Internet revolution can serve as an example of how to streamline development discussions and accelerate propagation of mechatronic technologies.
Stephen T. ("Steve") Hung received the B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Tennessee in 1983 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois in 1985 and 1989, respectively. He interned with the General Electric Company's Electric Utility Systems Engineering Department, Schenectady, NY, in 1984; was attached to the self-tuning arc-welding technology group of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, Champaign, IL, from 1985 to 1987; and worked from 1987 to 1988 as a consultant to PKResearch, Urbana IL, on Ford Motor Company's self-tuning control development efforts in the areas of road vehicle active suspension and vehicle speed control. From 1988 to 1992, Dr. Hung served as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Auburn University, Auburn, AL. During the summers of 1991 and 1992, he was also an Interagency Personnel Act (IPA) scientist with the U.S. Navy's Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, RI. In the fall of 1992, Ford Motor Company recruited Dr. Hung to help lead the successful traction control development effort for the Benetton/Ford B193B Formula One race car. With a ban on traction control in Formula One in effect subsequent to the 1993 season, he assisted with development of a hardware-in-the-loop system for real-time testing of Ford's Formula One powertrain electronics systems. He then joined Ford's Global Test Operations in 1995, where he was responsible for development and integration of a low-cost/high-durability data acquisition/communication system tailored for unobtrusive, remote monitoring of customers' vehicle usage. With the successful deployment of the monitoring system, he moved on in summer 1998 to join Visteon Corporation's Steering System Engineering strategic business unit, where, today, he is responsible for development of electrohydraulic steering systems and fully-electric steering systems for large cars and light trucks. Dr. Hung's research interests are centered around topics related to transportation systems electronics, and include adaptive and self-tuning systems, optimal predictive control techniques, motion control, and specification methodologies for cost minimization of control system implementations. Dr. Hung is a member of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.
