Photonics in Industry:

Herbert Kaplan

Photonics cuts and welds, verifies shapes and labels, and assesses function. It helps produce quality products and verify that quality.
Quality issues are the stuff of symposia throughout the world. Every industry faces a steady and increasing requirement to improve quality by optimizing the performance of the tools it uses for measurement and control. Photonics offers unprecedented opportunities for product quality improvement. Based on the continued efforts in corporate Six Sigma and other quality assurance programs, the association predicts continued growth in years to come, especially in the semiconductor, electronics, container, food, wood, transportation, plastic, printing and pharmaceutical industries.
On the manufacturing side, industrial laser shipments continue to rise after two decades of development. The semiconductor, electronics and automotive industries account for a significant number of these laser systems, but more and more lasers are going into small, new niche applications that are hard to capture in a general market study.