Text-Alternative Version: Boston Manufacturing R&D Workshop Video

Following is a text version of Jim Brodrick's welcome presentation video from the April 2011 DOE SSL Manufacturing R&D Workshop in Boston, Massachusetts.

Narrator: It is the human achievement against which all others are judged… putting a man on the moon. The United States saw a window of opportunity, a chance to take the technological lead and gain the strategic advantage. Less than a decade later, Americans explored the surface of another world. But how did we do it? What if we hadn't worked out the framework to make it possible? What if all the government and industry partners and thousands of individuals involved in the American space program had not figured out how to reach this common goal? Forty years later, the solid-state lighting industry faces another daunting challenge. How do we work together to accelerate market adoption of solid-state lighting?

Steve Paolini, Chief Technology Officer, Lunera Lighting: We were going in many different directions, each company had its own bit, universities, we didn't have any coordination on what we were doing and we didn't have a common set of metrics, even — how to express whether we were making progress or not.

Narrator: In 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy launched a new initiative focused specifically on manufacturing improvements that will reduce costs and improve the quality of solid-state lighting products. Equally important, this initiative seeks to carve out a significant role for U.S.-based manufacturing.

James Brodrick, Lighting Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy: DOE has a three-fold approach to this. We're looking to lower the cost of both OLEDs and LEDs by increasing the yield for every batch they make. Second thing is we would like the quality to stay the same but it will probably improve because to get more yield out of each batch obviously the quality is more consistent and better. Third thing, we're looking at job retention, keeping the know-how, the capability, the factories here in the United States.

Jim Anderson, Director of Strategic Marketing and Innovation, Philips Color Kinetics: There's clearly some manufacturing that's very desirable, some of the clean-tech jobs. It's important to decide what we want and to go after those specific jobs.

Narrator: Working together, DOE and representatives from all aspects of the manufacturing supply chain have developed a roadmap, a common framework of priorities to move solid-state lighting forward. The window of opportunity is open, a chance to carve out a role for U.S.-based manufacturing. But that window is closing fast.

Greg Merritt, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Cree: The hurdles in front of LED lighting today really have as much to do with the market as they do with the technology. The technology is really ready at this point for economic deployment in a number of places. What we see is a lack of awareness, a lack of education, sometimes a lack of belief that the economics work.

Makarand Chipalkatti, Senior Director, Solid State Lighting & Emerging Market Initiatives, OSRAM Sylvania: We have crossed pretty much a lot of the technical barriers that were supposed to be the big hurdles over the last ten years, but now the real issue in terms of deployment is being able to afford these lighting systems.

Steve Paolini: DOE's involvement in the solid-state lighting program accelerated the benefits that Haitz's Law predicts, and Haitz's Law basically states how quickly the technology will improve and how fast the costs will come down.

Makarand Chipalkatti: Anything we can do to scale up this technology so it's widely adopted, that is really going to make the big difference.

Jim Brodrick: This is really essential, that the risks taken by the companies, and they place their bets, that the market is going to move forward. CFL's lost at least a decade before they really got on track for what the customer wanted, what was the right performance, what was the right price.

Jim Anderson: The United States has always been known for its innovation, its creativity, and I believe we need a bold goal, like putting a man on the moon, to get everybody to work together to move the industry forward.

Narrator: The countdown is on, the technology is taking off, what is our strategy going to be?