Men Mikro

Introduction

Since its foundation in 1982, Men Mikro designs and manufactures failure-safe computer boards and systems for extreme environmental conditions in industrial and safety-critical embedded applications.

Men Mikro have 175 employees and own subsidiaries in France and the USA with an export share of 50%. Customized solutions generate more than half of their revenue. In addition the standard product range includes far more than 100 different computer boards based on PowerPC and Intel Pentium and multi-core processors with the corresponding BIOS, BSP and driver software, as well as manifold I/O boards and completely configured systems. The consistent use of FPGA technology gives them high flexibility when configuring customized and standard products.

Their products are used worldwide as control, measuring, test or simulation computers in all kinds of embedded applications. These comprise extremely safety-critical markets such as railways, including buses and commercial vehicles, aerospace technology or the medical industry, but also mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, telecommunications and the automotive industry.

Computer systems in such applications are in operation up to 24 hours every day and often need to be available for 10 years and longer. Ideally no failures must occur to avoid costly downtimes of machines or danger to human life.

In order to meet the quality requirements of market-specific standards such as EN 50155 (railways), German Lloyd (ships) or DO-254 (aerospace), MEN develop their products according to the V model, with the single design steps being monitored continuously. They manufacture using their own placement line, which is set up to work fully automatically and therefore guarantees the highest production quality.

The traceability necessary for safety-critical applications is guaranteed through time stamping during the production process and is integrated into the acquisition of the organization's data. Functional product testing has also been done automatically in line for some time. To verify the design and product quality under harsh environmental conditions and to prepare official quality certificates they have their own environmental laboratory. Here they carry out type and routine tests for operation between -40 and +85°C under dry and wet climate conditions as well as vibration and shock tests. In-house EMC tests include ESD, burst and electromagnetic interference.

Men Mikro are certified to ISO 9001 since 1997 in order to offer their customers the highest quality in products and services on the basis of a recognized quality management system. This was enhanced in 2003 by certification to ISO 14001, which comprises the aspects of occupational safety and environmental protection by saving energy, minimizing waste and using uncritical materials in production. To officially meet the severe quality requirements in critical applications MEN are currently preparing for certification to AS 9100 (aerospace) and IRIS (railways).

Products