NEC Electronics Europe establishes European Quality Centre

Extended services to ensure enhanced Quality Assurance

DUESSELDORF (Germany), October 5, 2006 — NEC Electronics Europe announces the successful introduction of services at its newly established European Quality Centre (EQC) in Düsseldorf, to provide enhanced quality assurance and failure analysis service to automotive customers in the region. This is in line with NEC Electronics’ global strategy to further improve microcontroller (MCU) business by enhancing quality control functions as announced earlier this year. The company, currently the world’s leading supplier of 32bit MCUs, aims to become the world's #1 supplier of automotive MCUs by 2010, and accordingly is taking bold steps to improve its support to automotive and industrial customers worldwide.

The EQC’s establishment will serve to ensure enhanced quality. In the field of semiconductors, MCUs for the automotive market have particularly sensitive requirements for high quality control. A fast and flexible response from suppliers is a key requirement of this industry. NEC Electronics has one of the lowest defect rates in the industry, and the company is ardently continuing its pursuit of ever higher reliability and quality control standards worldwide.
“The new European Quality Centre has been established at NEC Electronics Europe's headquarters in Düsseldorf, and sees the quality assurance activities currently conducted merged with new failure analysis facilities” Matthias Voigt, General Manager of NEC Electronics Europe Engineering Group commented. “The integration of quality management functions in the same location will enable us to provide even more timely and comprehensive solutions to customers in the region”.

Investment into advanced failure analysis equipment will enable the EQC to swiftly handle every step down to root cause analysis of microcontrollers whenever needed. By taking over the entire qualification equipment, the EQC can complement other key functions located at NEC Electronics Europe’s Headquarters already, such as technical product support, system and chip design as well as test program development and general quality proceedings.

NEC Electronics continually strives to provide improved services to its customers, and expects that the measures introduced today will enable the company to increase its market share in the rapidly growing field of automotive MCUs. The company's global goal is to achieve a 20 percent market share, or approximately 1 billion Euros in sales of automotive MCUs, by 2010.

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About NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH

NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, is a leading developer and supplier of semiconductor products in Europe. Committed to meeting customers' cost, performance and time-to-market requirements, the company offers solutions ranging from standard products to system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions, as well as customized products for next-generation designs. Our customers also benefit from state-of-the-art manufacturing from the global production network of our parent company, NEC Electronics Corporation. Additionally, NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH is the exclusive European sales and marketing channel of LCD modules from NEC LCD Technologies Ltd. For more information visit here