Company

E Ink Corporation is the world's largest supplier of displays to the eBook industry.  Products made with E Ink electronic paper displays have a paper-like high contrast and appearance, ultra-low power consumption, and a thin, feather-light form. – From E Ink's website

Description

The client originally contacted SPEC to expand one of their downstream process manufacturing steps. This was necessitated by a very large order for E Ink’s displays for use in Motorola’s low cost Third World cell phone product line.

Project

SPEC built a new room within E Ink's existing building, installed new ventilation, a PLC based control system with three cabinets, and all the process and utility support piping to complete the installation. As part of this expansion, a new type of centrifuge was installed resulting in improved product recovery rates.

At the conclusion of this first manufacturing process debottlenecking project, E Ink asked SPEC to upgrade and increase the capacity of their upstream reaction process as well. To allow this expansion to take place, the existing power feed to the building needed to be increased, and E Ink decided to install a standby generator for their critical manufacturing steps as part of this electrical system upgrade. The three additional projects and the original downstream process were implemented within one calendar year at a total cost of approximately $2.2M. The end result was an 83% increase in overall product yield.

Project Highlights