KPD Electronics

Innovation, as they say, is not just thinking out-of-the-box. It involves an unwavering commitment to an idea and patience to take repeated attempts and relentless efforts before it becomes accepted. This perfectly surmises the story of mechanical engineer Ye Ke and his commitment to better position his nation in a global market, undeterred by several obstacles.

After completing his graduation, Mr. Ye began his research and development work in a military unit. The nature of Mr. Ye’s work often left him exposed to temperature sensor products and materials. During his stay in the military camp, he learned how countries like Germany and America had positioned themselves significantly in the electronics market, overtaking China. This stemmed from the lack of resources and knowledge that could help China to research, develop, and produce thermistors and chips of higher quality. Bound by his strong sense of patriotism, keen market intuition, and pioneering spirit, Mr. Ye decisively invested millions of RMB in establishing KPD Electronics in 1997. He studied the production process of NTC chips and joined hands with semiconductor and chip R&D scientist Professor Fu to break the ground for NTC development in China.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Over the years, the duo cracked many hard nuts to develop a domestic chip production technique that maintains good consistency and yield good-quality chips with a standard qualification rate. Credits to the unremitting efforts made by Professor Fu’s team and the strong leadership of Mr. Ye, in 2008, KPD facilitated the establishment of NTC chip research and production base in Dongguan. Presently, with Ms. Karen Ye at the helm as general

manager, the company is soaring high in both domestic and international markets, demonstrating its out-of-the-box core technologies of NTC chips, advanced automated production, and intellectual property rights. Moreover, Ms. Karen’s ingrained knowledge has enabled KPD to digitize its products and curate a quotation system that generates accurate results. This opens doors for sustained relationships with first-rate international enterprises, including TE Connectivity, Bosch, Philips, SEB, and the likes of it.

Since its inception, KPD has modernized its research and production strategies to improvise third and fourth-generation chips, which currently plays a pivotal role in redefining its chip technology and fostering talented professionals. Its current business focuses on NTC thermistor and temperature sensors, usually composed of two or three metal oxides and forged into ceramics in a high-temperature furnace. This allows the sensors to detect and control temperature alterations.

In essence, KPD’s thermistors and temperature sensors are used in various industries, including smart home and appliances, automotive electronics, new energy, and others. Special attention is given to the temperature components to make them less reactive to degree fluctuations and ensure product safety by reducing overheating and explosion. For instance, aware of the high-temperature hazards that might occur by the battery pack of new energy vehicles, KPD uses a compact water drop-type temperature sensor that responds quickly to any changes in heat variation.

Benefits Galore

As a response to Industry 4.0 demands and the upgrade to lean productionmanagement, KPD continually ameliorates its equipment and level of product automation to ensure consistency, stability, and safety of end-users. The company also boasts of a powerful mass-production capability that can meet the ever-increasing needs of a tech-savvy generation. This is well represented by its annual production capacity of 1.5 billion chips and 500 million thermistors together with over 20 million temperature sensors. “We always prioritize customers’ requirements over our costs. This capability can completely satisfy the quantity requirements set by our customers,” says Ms. Karen. In the same vein, the company customizes its sensor-keeping them at par with compliance norms–and helps clients gain new market opportunities by overcoming technical roadblocks.

“The entire product line of KPD is UL,TS16949,CE, and RoHS certified,” remarks Mr. Ye, founder, KPD Electronics. As for UL certification, it successfully acquires the world’s highest temperature certification in the industry, namely, UL 300, contrary to the commonly used 200 degrees. Second, unlike others’ series certification, KPD provides higher certification costs and has been certified for every conventional parameter so that the quality requirements and guarantee of its customers are fully met. “Finally, we have participated in crafting new energy industry standards and product specifications for the new energy industry and are the first to receive the IATF 16949 certification,” affirms the mechanical engineer.

In its journey so far, KPD Electronics has scripted numerous success stories at the behest of its stellar products. Mr. Ke elucidates one such engagement to paint an evocative picture of how the company mitigates clients’ roadblocks. One such success story is when KPD Electronics reduced the response time of sensors underwater.

Mr. Ye explains that due to the increasingly upgraded and modernized water purification equipment, the quality of temperature sensors affects the quality performance of most water-treatment equipment. Hence, the fastest response of thermistor temperature sensors used in those systems ranges from approximately between four to five seconds in flowing water. However, KPD has successfully broken this record. The company’s independently developed GF series of temperature sensors, which are made from advanced materials using premium technologies, have reduced the response in water to less than two seconds. This revolutionary breakthrough has significantly improved the response speed of temperature sensors, providing accurate temperature control solutions to customers that use water treatment equipment and home appliances while defending the safety of high-quality water treatment equipment and safeguarding healthy drinkable water.

Today, KPD Electronics takes pride in helping clients sail through the choppy waters of the pandemic. At a time when the medical market witnessed an acute shortage of supplies, especially infrared thermometers, the company’s KPD engineers and chip research team worked incessantly to overcome the chip shortage required to build the devices. “In order to fulfill the surging chip orders, we simultaneously introduced multiple automated equipment for chip making, cutting, and processing. Faced with the national emergency, we were encouraged by our founder to keep the selling price under control despite the shortage of supply in the market,” explains Ms. Karen. In the upcoming years, the company seeks to keep the same pace of innovation and blaze the trail into the next generation of sensor technology.