Management Newsline

(Summary Article)

By Martin Foster

Photo credit: Nobusato Matsuzaki

Over 250 media representatives and securities analysts gathered at the Epson Business and Technology Forum 2007 on March 27 in Tokyo to view a variety of new commercial and industrial applications for Epson’s proprietary Micro Piezo technology—the core component of the company’s inkjet printers. The range of applications for this unique technology is potentially huge, and it promises to become a key driver of future profit growth.

In response to the unrestrained price erosion and market saturation that have dampened Epson’s profitability, especially in its semiconductor and LCD segments, on March 14 the company announced a series of profit-enhancing measures, Including the streamlining of its display business. This is considered an important step forward for the company, as it signals the end of a period of retrenchment and the resumption of a more aggressive, forward-looking management stance. Epson is back on track to achieve a consolidated pretax profit of ¥100 billion in the year ending March 31, 2009, as targeted in its Creativity and Challenge 1000 mid-range business plan, announced in March 2006.

Micro Piezo technology will play a central role in this revival. The Business and Technology Forum showcased Epson’s latest achievements in a full range of areas where this technology is being applied, including in the printers for the consumer and office market, as a leading medium of artistic and photographic expression, as a business-enhancing tool for retailers, and in a breakthrough approach to industrial production.

Wide Choice of Liquids and Media

Unlike competitor inkjet systems, which use heat to propel droplets of ink onto a paper medium, Epson’s Micro Piezo technology is mechanically based. The precise pulses of Micro Piezo elements cause the walls of the ink reservoir to distort inward and outward to project ink through the nozzle. This results in consistent and variable-sized droplets without unwanted spraying or misting. Because it does not require heat, Micro Piezo technology can spray many types of liquid onto a wide variety of materials.

This ability to precisely spray a wide choice of liquids is now being applied to the fabrication of circuit boards and LCD color filters as a replacement for traditional photolithographic approaches, which place a heavier burden on the environment, thus encouraging the emergence of smaller and more eco-friendly factories. Also, in contrast to thermal print heads, which require frequent replacement, Micro Piezo heads are more compact and offer superior durability.

"We are now leveraging these advantages of the Micro Piezo print head to open the door to applications beyond consumer printing," commented Epson President and COO Seiji Hanaoka. "As a business and manufacturing tool, this technology
holds the key to our future growth and expansion."

Micro Piezo’s ability to propel liquids onto a wide variety of materials has enabled Epson to develop inkjet systems for industrial production, specifically the fabrication of electronic circuit boards and LCDs.

Micro Piezo technology, for example, is now being used in the fabrication of the color filters for eighth-generation LCD panels that are used in large flat-screen TVs and that were on display at the Business and Technology Forum. Compared to conventional processing techniques, the use of Micro Piezo technology to apply the necessary red, green, and blue (RGB) color combination greatly reduces the number of processes necessary to make the color filters, considerably improving productivity and cutting costs.

The inkjet machines Epson designed and developed to produce color filters for large LCD TVs were installed in the biggest LCD plant in Japan last year and are now being used in commercial production.

In 2005, moreover, Epson introduced an inkjet system to produce alignment layers for state-of-the-art high-temperature polysilicon displays that are used in its own 3LCD projectors.

Another promising business area for Micro Piezo technology is printing on demand. "We’re taking advantage of our Micro Piezo technology to popularize POD systems," Executive Vice-President Norio Niwa told forum participants. "This will allow people to produce the prints they need, when they need them, in the exact quantities needed, and on whatever material they choose. We’ll be developing our own products as well as selling our head technology to other companies and proposing new business models."

One key component of Epson’s POD strategy will be a new print head, the development of which was also announced at the forum.

"We have switched to in-house production of the piezo materials that go into the print head," explained Director Minoru Usui. "This has enabled us to develop much thinner heads and to achieve much higher rates of distortion in the piezo element." This new head will be used not only in Epson-brand printers but also in fields requiring faster printing speeds and higher productivity.

One thing is clear. Whether you are sitting in front of your TV, standing in line at the supermarket, or printing out digital photos or documents, Micro Piezo technology represents the wave of the future.