Hard to say what we expect for 2022, what we hope for is a lot easier. Would COVID really become endemic, a bad flu? Would we really be able to return to the “pre-corona normal”, see clients face to face, visit our colleagues all over the globe?
In any case, we will continue to do what we do best, serving our customers, both in the Life Sciences and in the Semiconductor business with top notch products and world class service. We buffered the issues in the supply chain to level playing field for our customers. We grew our capacity to enable our customers to benefit from the steep growth in demand and did so amid equipment and installation shortages, personnel absences and transportation problems. Sometimes, we are praised, we even get rewards, but most of the time, for our repeat business customers, we are like air: omnipresent and one less thing to worry about. For our prospects and customers in process development we strive to be the brother in arms, the colleague extra muros. Much of all the work to enable this is happening behind the scenes. It is a choice, it is who we are. Partners in business know that and they stay with us for the long haul. For 2022 we plan to again work and improve our service and our products even further. We have plans in place, we expect we can do it.
Being born in the year before the first IC was created (J.S. Kilby), I have seen the semiconductor business grow from a pretty dangerous, small scale activity into the realm of the most sophisticated technology in the world that it is today. Professionalization and specialization increased at light speed.
New challenges lie ahead, becoming greener and more sustainable not the least of these, a boundary condition asking for even more creativity. At JSR as well as at our customers new generations of people are working on it. The law of Moore and more than Moore, the ever present drive towards further miniaturization and increased complexity, both are alive and kicking, and who knows, some disruptive new development may lay on the horizon. Personally, I have worked my last full year for JSR, I will retire in December, after that I will follow the developments from the sidelines and explain to my grandchildren how we created the first GaAs transistor in Ghent on the evening before Christmas eve of the year that I married their grandma, provided they would be interested.