Cognex receives $2 million order from semiconductor-equipment manufacturer

JUNE 15--Cognex Corporation (Natick, MA; www.cognex.com) has received a single purchase order in excess of $2 million from Accretech, a Japanese manufacturer of semiconductor processing equipment. The purchase order is for Cognex vision systems to be delivered over the next few months and is in addition to the more than $7 million in orders that Cognex had previously received from Accretech this year.

Accretech will integrate the Cognex vision systems into its wafer probers to perform alignment and inspection tasks on silicon wafers at Accretech's customers' facilities. "Wafer probing ensures that chip makers avoid the expense of assembling and packaging defective chips by identifying problems early in the manufacturing process. We depend on Cognex to help us supply the tools our customers need to produce error-free chips," said Makoto Nihei, executive officer and manager of the Prober System Group.

Formerly Tokyo Seimitsu Co Ltd. or TSK, Accretech's principal activity is the manufacture and sale of semiconductor-manufacturing equipment and precision measuring devices. Operations are carried out through both the Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Division (wafer-probing machines, wafer-dicing machines, wafer-inspection machines, and polish grinders) and the Precision Measuring Devices Division (in-line measuring instruments and industrial measuring instruments).

Cognex designs, develops, manufactures, and markets machine-vision systems. The company has shipped more than 200,000 machine-vision systems, representing more than $1.5 billion in cumulative revenue, since the company's founding in 1981.