GOLETA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SLD Laser, a world leader in commercialization of visible laser light sources, has been named one of the 2020 Best Workplaces in Manufacturing & Production by Great Place to Work and FORTUNE. SLD was honored with the #7 spot on the list of Best Small and Medium Workplaces in Manufacturing and Production. This ranking considered feedback representing over 160,000 employees working at Great Place to Work-Certified organizations in the manufacturing and production industry. Great Place to Work, a global people analytics and consulting firm, evaluated more than 60 elements of team members’ experience on the job. These included the extent to which employees trust leaders, the respect with which people are treated, the fairness of workplace decisions, and how much camaraderie there is among the team. Rankings are based on employees’ feedback and reward companies who best include all employees, no matter who they are or what they do for the organization.
“SLD Laser is a great place to work because employees’ concerns are heard and listened to. Our team members act and engage to make SLD a better place,” commented Stephen Himphayvanh, Senior Manufacturing Technician. Additionally, Dr. James Raring, SLD Laser President, COO, and Cofounder stated, “SLD is proud to be recognized for creating one of the best workplaces in the manufacturing and production industry.”
SLD launched its automotive certified LaserLightTM illumination products last year and is now ramping production with products deployed into headlights on the road globally. SLD’s white light sources are more than 10 times brighter than LEDs, enabling safe stopping distance with precise illumination patterns and minimum glare, while meeting stringent safety regulations of UL and IEC. Additionally, LaserLight modules are 1/3 the size of LED sources, saving critical space in the car, and providing unmatched design freedom for ultra-thin styling possibilities. SLD is also commercializing bright and efficient fiber light sources with 10 times the brightness of LED fiber solutions, delivering brilliant illumination from thin, low cost plug-and-play fiber optics.
SLD’s LaserLight products won the prestigious Technical Innovation Award at the 2019 LightFair International Conference, for the world’s first UL certified 1-kilometer range MicroSpot modules for portable lighting, flashlights and drones in security, police, fire, emergency, rescue, and outdoor recreation. These sources are the engine for the world’s first chip-based 40,000 lumen LaserLight spotlights, replacing legacy spotlight technology based on Xenon HID bulbs. LaserLight spotlights can deliver 10 km range, are lightweight and portable, and are ideal for entertainment & architecture, avionics and search & rescue, ports & marine lighting, as well as outdoor pole lights and stadiums.
For applications Beyond LightingTM, SLD announced earlier this year its dual emission white and infrared sources, enabling high-resolution ranging and sensing with 1% ranging accuracy. The sources provide a breakthrough solution for applications such as ADAS sensing, rangefinding, and depth sensing, replacing radar modules and enabling dramatically simplified 3D imaging and LiDAR systems. The technology can meet the sensing needs of existing cars, as well as future mobility applications including autonomous vehicles, drones, and avionics.
In addition to sensing, SLD has developed ultra-high speed LaserLight LiFi communication technology that delivers data rates of over 20 Gigabit per second, twenty times faster than 5G data transfer. The white and infrared dual emission light sources can be collimated for long range mobility applications or configured for floodlight broadcast to address large areas. The sources deliver a unique combination of ultra-high data rate and long-range broadcast to address the intense data transfer needs of emerging mobility applications such as smart cars & smart cities, and 10G fixed installations for offices, homes, healthcare facilities, and factories. SLD’s LiFi leverages the unconstrained visible light spectrum to overcome challenges of RF and Wi-Fi, while delivering data securely compared with incumbent technology.
About SLD Laser
SLD Laser is commercializing a new generation of visible laser light sources for automotive, mobility, specialty lighting, and consumer applications. The company is ISO 9001 certified and automotive compliant to IATF 16949, and operates facilities in Santa Barbara, CA and in Fremont, CA. SLD Laser’s high luminance LaserLight sources are UL and IEC safety certified, and are utilized in a myriad of applications including automotive & mobility, specialty & portable lighting, entertainment & outdoor, projection & AR/VR displays, biomedical instrumentation & therapeutics, and industrial imaging & material processing. SLD Laser was founded in 2013 by several leading global pioneers in solid-state lighting, including Dr. Shuji Nakamura, 2014 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Dr. Steve Denbaars, Dr. James Raring, and Dr. Paul Rudy. To learn more about SLD Laser, visit www.SLDlaser.com or contact the company at info@SLDlaser.com or 1-866-SLD-LASE.
About the Best Workplaces in Manufacturing & Production
The Best Workplaces in Manufacturing & Production is one of a series of rankings by Great Place to Work and FORTUNE based on employee feedback from Great Place to Work-Certified™ organizations. Great Place to Work based its ranking on a data-driven methodology applied to anonymous Trust Index™ survey responses representing over 160,000 employees working at Great Place to Work-Certified organizations in the manufacturing and production industry. To learn more about Great Place to Work Certification and recognition on Best Workplaces lists published with FORTUNE, visit Greatplacetowork.com.
About Great Place to Work
Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, they have surveyed more than 100 million employees around the world and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Great Place to Work helps organizations quantify their culture and produce better business results by creating a high-trust work experience for all employees. Emprising®, their culture management platform, empowers leaders with the surveys, real-time reporting, and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. Their unparalleled benchmark data is used to recognize Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies and the Best Workplaces™ in the US and more than 60 countries, including the 100 Best Companies to Work For® and World’s Best list published annually in Fortune. Everything they do is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a Great Place to Work For All™. To learn more, visit greatplacetowork.com, listen to the podcast Better by Great Place to Work, and read “A Great Place to Work for All.” Join the community on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
