Donegal-based software company, International Test Technologies, has signed a £40 million (€41 million) contract with a US equipment manufacturer following its development of new testing technology.
International Test Technologies, which employs 20 people at its Falcarragh technology centre, claims it can reduce the cost of production of PC motherboards by significantly reducing the end of line test time to less than one minute.
According to ITT chief executive, Mr Gerry Jones, the innovation is generating considerable industry interest with several evaluations underway with well-known PC manufacturers.
The new five-year contract with GenRad in the US saw the technology deployed this week under the GRMicroXL brand name at NEPCON 2000 in California. This application of the technology is exclusively for the PC microprocessor based board testing marketplace.
The cost savings to PC manufacturers for end of line functional testing are estimated to have fallen from between $2 (€2.06) and $4 to under $1. This is significant as the National Electronics Manufacturers Initiative (NEMI) in the US recently estimated that the cost of motherboard testing accounts for around one-third of total production costs.
According to Mr Jones, the PC manufacturing industry is expected to grow to 130 million units this year from 115 million units last year. Profit margins are being squeezed, and production cost reductions are seen as extremely attractive.
"The market opportunities for other sectors would be bigger again than what we've signed to date. In particular the telecommunications and data communications industry offer a huge market as this is a market Intel is really focusing on now," says Mr Jones.
This first implementation of the technology is the outcome of a partnership with semiconductor giant Intel to use its processor technology. Further applications of the technology can now be applied to the telecommunications, automotive, military and avionics industries.
The underlying key to the test technology is that it no longer needs to be hardware-based, but can be incorporated into a single PCI card for plug in to a test processor. The motherboard can now be hooked up to the processor directly, instead of having to re-boot Windows for every unit.
Mr Jones says the development has halved its production costs in the last year, and factoring in expected revenues, he predicts ITT sales to rise from £1.1 million last year to £4 million this year.
The company is likely to break even this year, and ITT is currently considering raising £2 million funding possibly through stockbrokers, Dolmen Butler Briscoe.
Mr Jones currently owns 28 per cent of ITT, while the management team comprised of Mr Billy Fenton, chief technology officer, Mr Frank Purcell, vice-president of sales, and Mr Paul Davis, chief financial officer share a 40 per cent stake.
Institutional investors hold 28 per cent of the equity through Enterprise Equity and Border County Funds, while staff currently hold share options to the value of 4 per cent, which Mr Jones says is set to increase.
