Activity in Asia is basically focused on Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. The effort realised in Australia and Hong Kong is remarkable as well although, the activities in these countries have been mostly pushed by universities.

Both Japan and Korea support large, multi-year country-wide programs in micromanufacturing and micro-factories, although in Korea this has been a very recent phenomenon. In Japan, the 10-Year Micromachine Program (1991-2001) constituted a major government investment that started a number of initiatives with industry that continue even today. Major successes include micromanufacturing and assembly systems at Olympus, Seiko, Hitachi, Fanuc, and Mitsubishi. In Korea, the Korean Institute of Machinery and Metals (KIMM) was awarded a major government contract for micro-factory development (saving energy, saving space and saving resources) [11] (see Fig. 2.5).

 In Japan, both the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science & Technology and The Institute of Physical & Chemical Research (RIKEN) have missions heavily oriented towards R&D for industrial application, and both make major efforts directed towards micromanufacturing with very impressive results. In both laboratories, the R&D programs are producing very sophisticated, complex, and highly innovative processing methods. It is interesting to note that most of the micromanufacturing equipment developed could be classified as somewhat exotic in nature, directed toward sophisticated, low-volume, high-precision needs of specific products and devices, and requiring a significant investment costing between several $100K to $1 million.

The companies that have been strong over the past two to three decades in manufacturing leadership, e.g. FANUC (controls), Matsushita Electric (consumer products), Mitsubishi Electric (electronic products, devices) and Olympus (optics), seem to have invested heavily in micromanufacturing technologies continuously over the last fifteen or so years [13].

Regarding the relationship between the universities and companies in Japan, companies expect universities to teach fundamental principles and provide broad scientific education, whereas they provide focused and application-oriented special training during the early years of employment. The government policy related to intellectual property (IP) provides a favourable situation for industry regarding university-based innovations and inventor-ship under government funding. Companies can purchase licenses from the government, that owns all such funded IP, to commercialize university-based inventions.

In Taiwan, there is some institutional government investment, but it is mostly through large corporations with strong product focus, typical of Japan’s “branding” strategy. The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is the major government-supported laboratory conducting research in support of Taiwan’s high-technology industries, with a large segment being devoted to micromanufacturing research and development. Another government facility, the Metal Industries Research Institute (MIRI) is initiating a program in micro/meso-scale manufacturing methods (M4) [14].

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