CTO: ASML needs to double down on customer value

Cost containment will be essential to “make sure that the appetite for shrink remains strong” in the future, CTO Martin van den Brink says in ASML’s 2022 Annual Report. “We need to be more and more focused on cost reduction – that means not reducing resources but making sure that the solutions we bring to market are simpler, more sustainable, more serviceable, more manufacturable and more scalable. It’s not responsible to move to the next product without understanding the cost and complexity constraints we have to put on those products from the very beginning.”

This mission applies to all of ASML’s products, but in particular to the hyper-NA EUV scanner, the intended 0.7+ NA successor to high-NA equipment with NA 0.55. “Ten years ago, when we developed high-NA, we couldn’t have imagined that NA beyond 0.55 even existed. So hyper-NA is very, very difficult to achieve. The great thing is that our business and R&D capability are such that we can handle all of these things simultaneously. We can develop technology like hyper-NA while focusing on cost containment, simplicity, sustainability, manufacturability and serviceability all at the same time,” according to Van den Brink.

ASML tested the waters recently in developing a new optical metrology system, which will be introduced later this year. Re-examining the project “with intense cost parameters” resulted in technology “many times more cost-effective than before.”