"Rockwell Scientific fully endorses Wizdom's proposal submitted to the Missile Defense Agency, in response to the proposal titled Innovative Manufacturing Processes/Yield enhancement of MBE HgCdTe FPA Production. Rockwell Scientific is seeking innovative process improvements that can meet our needs including, where appropriate, a process technology roadmap for implementing promising approaches for near term insertion into the overall production of Focal Plane Arrays (FPA). This will entail the development of a methodology, or series of methods, necessary and sufficient to radically improve the yield of existing FPAs by enabling the online assessment of the overall FPA production process and specifically which variables predominate in affecting FPA production yield at RSC. This proposed effort will serve as the basis for: 1) Identifying key variables which affect the producibility of FPAs, 2) Enabling a day-to-day operations model which will used to monitor changes to the production processes which an acceptable yield. The effort will determine the need, the feasibility, and expected outcomes. It will serve as an approach to improving production capabilities, improve product quality and reliability with minimal impact to the production operation in terms of time and cost of transitioning prototypes into production."
