KITCHENER, ON—Christie Digital Systems USA Inc. is using robots to automate assembly of its MicroTile LEDs at its new factory here. The robots have tripled output of the line.

TORRINGTON, CT—NASA has listed light-curable conformal coating 9771 from Dymax Corp. on its Materials and Processes Technical Information System (MAPTIS).

PORT WASHINGTON, NY—Pall Corp. will build a new facility in western Singapore to make lithography, and wet-etch filtration, separation and purification products that help the advanced node process during semiconductor manufacturing.

KARIYA, Japan—Automotive supplier DENSO Corp. and United Semiconductor Japan Co. Ltd. (USJC) have agreed to collaborate on the production of power semiconductors at USJC’s 300-millimeter fab to serve growing demand in the automotive market.

Resilient supply chains are fundamental to our national security and economic prosperity. The pandemic-induced collapse of global supply chains has launched a national movement to strengthen domestic manufacturing.

SHANGHAI, China—China’s biggest microchip producer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., and Apple Inc. supplier Pegatron
Corp. continue to operate factories here during the city’s most-recent COVID-19 lockdown by isolating workers and running a closed-off procedure allowed by local authorities.

The chaos in supply chains has manufacturers clamoring for storage space to keep contingency inventory—in other words, the reverse of JIT. The new mania is for “just-in-case” inventories. Welcome to the 1970s.

BEIJING—Samsung and other NAND Flash memory chip manufacturers have begun quoting memory chip prices again, after Chinese authorities ended a pandemic lockdown of the city Xi’an earlier this month.

TAIWAN—An escalated or prolonged conflict between Russia and Ukraine could negatively impact Ukraine's long-term ability to supply the raw material gases neon, argon, krypton and xenon needed for semiconductor production, according to researchers at TrendForce.

SANTA CLARA, CA—Intel Corp. and Tower Semiconductor, a leading foundry for analog semiconductors, have announced an agreement under which Intel will acquire Tower for approximately $5.4 billion.