Critical Manufacturing Showcases cmNAVIGO 2.0 Solar Edition at Intersolar US 2010

AUSTIN, Texas, July 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Critical Manufacturing, an enterprise which creates leading edge software solutions for the high-tech manufacturing industries of solar, electronics and semiconductors, will be exhibiting at Intersolar North America, showcasing cmNAVIGO 2.0 Solar Edition, a rich Internet Manufacturing Enterprise Solution (MES) which allows photovoltaic manufacturers to combine a highly flexible and pre-customized rich set manufacturing execution and analytical solutions with tightly integrated quality tools.

"While solar manufacturers keep looking for new ways of achieving lower costs and higher throughputs, they face manufacturing processing challenges that require continuous monitoring and adjustment of process and equipment variables. Further optimizations without tight control of such parameters and variables will inevitably result in lower yields and quality problems. Examples are the associated sawing and handling of ever thinner wafers as these reach critical dimensions," explains Francisco Almada Lobo, Critical Manufacturing's CEO.

While cmNAVIGO was focused on modeling, execution flexibility and full traceability aspects, in hierarchical WIP tracking multi-level resource tracking, dispatching, advanced engineering data collection, carrier, consumables and durables management, cmNAVIGO 2.0 Solar Edition introduces a complete set of integrated Quality Management tools, including Statistical Process Control (SPC), Process compliance and Exception Management.

In addition, cmNAVIGO 2.0 Solar edition, with its interactive Silverlight based web-interface, has been richly customized to allow:

1. Flexible modeling for all PV manufacturing materials, products and flows, for Crystalline Silicon and Thin-Film production lines;
2. Advanced hierarchical material tracking , with sub-material tracking - ideal for modeling batches and lots of ingots, bricks, wafers, or for batch panels in thin-film lines;
3. Tracking and traceability of durables, such as crucibles;
4. Manual and automatic data collection, with sampling, aggregations and calculations; User customizable dashboards with online production line status;
5. Pre-configured reports for most common KPI's such as cycle-time, yield, uptime, PPH, MTBF, MTTR, ...;
6. Pre-set data warehouse cubes for material and resource, for advanced analytical operations.

New VP of Sales & Business Development

Jeff Peabody was appointed new VP of Sales & Business Development. Jeff has held senior positions in marketing and sales of factory automation solutions in semiconductor manufacturing for the last 18 years. Early in his career, Jeff Peabody drove the adoption of now commonplace systems into semiconductor factories, including Manufacturing Execution Systems, Analytics, Material and Equipment Control, Advanced Process Control, Dispatching and RFID. Most recently, Jeff held a senior position in the Global Services Group of Applied Materials, with (sales management) responsibility over key global accounts.

Jeff Peabody states that, "with equipment and factory costs skyrocketing, software is one of the most cost effective methods of adding capacity, efficiency, and productivity improvements to complex manufacturing operations." He adds that "Critical Manufacturing and cmNavigo 2.0 represent a new generation in Manufacturing Execution Systems by leveraging years of experience and best practices in high–tech manufacturing with the cutting edge advancements of Microsoft manufacturing software. In my experience in high-tech MES products, cmNavigo is unmatched with its Rich Internet Application technology, giving the product tremendous capability and ease of use."

Critical Manufacturing will be exhibiting at Intersolar North America 2010 in San Francisco's Moscone Center West Hall from July 13-15, booth number 7635H.

About Critical Manufacturing S.A.

Critical Manufacturing creates leading edge software solutions for the advanced manufacturing industries of solar, electronics and semiconductors. Critical Manufacturing has its headquarters and main technical centre in Portugal and additional facilities in the US, Germany and China.

SOURCE Critical Manufacturing