Pioneering e-display factory opens in Dresden

The Dresden factory employs 70 but is largely automated. The material handling and flow from one piece of equipment to another is through automated vehicles and managed by production software, Herre said.

Total capital investment in the plant is $100M, including equipment, special cleanroom environment and premises. Plastic Logic received an investment subsidy of 36 percent of invested capital ($36M) from the German government for setting up in the Dresden region, Herre said.

Dresden hosts the semiconductor operations of AMD, Infineon and Qimonda and also has a cluster of organic electronics activity. Fraunhofer Institute of Photonic Microsystems is nearby, working on materials development in the OLED business. Fraunhofer has spun off local companies such as Novaled.

"The OLED business is a little different [from Plastic Logic's] but it has an infrastructure behind it that helps us," Herre said.

Plastic Logic's process will be transferred from Cambridge, UK, where the e-display prototype was developed. The company will manufacture the displays and hand them off to an EMS partner to build the final device.

Initially, production will involve additional tests, making cycle time for one unit about two weeks. "We will then shorten that to days," Herre said.

Commercial production is expected in mid-2009. The plant has a total capacity of 1 million units, but the infrastructure like the cleanroom and IT systems are designed to allow a doubling of capacity, Herre said.