Dear all SNF users:
After some additional discussions with our users and consultations with
the Faculty Director and staff of SNF, we have modified our changes to
the rate structure of SNF. We are still going to move forward with the
shift to a lower hourly rate and a higher cap, but we will do so in two
steps so that long lead time budgets can be adjusted in a less abrupt
manner. We still see a shift to lower starting costs which is important
to increasing new users and if successful, in time should allow us to
lower overall rate or improve capabilities.
As such, this means we are going to make 1/2 of the change starting Jun
1, and the remainder on Dec 1. In generating future budgets, please use
the Dec 1 numbers for your planning.
This does incur a risk to SNF, as it will delay our ability to get out
of the financial deficit that we are in and was discussed in the user
meeting. It also has the potential to delay some upgrades we are hoping
to do in the near term to better improve our services, in particular a
service contract for the AMAT Epi tool which is in discussion for June
and potentially replacement capability for the Dryteks and MRC which are
at the top of our list of tools to improve. These may be delayed as we
delay the implementation of the rate changes, depending on the trend of
our program income balance.
The new rates schedules are attached and will be up on the web site
shortly. Please note the first grouping is the June 1 rates, the second
is the December 1 rates and the third is the current rates for comparison.
Any questions, please let me know.
Regards,
John
_________________
John Bumgarner, PhD
Operations Director SNF
On 5/8/12 4:43 PM, John Bumgarner wrote:
> Dear all SNF users:
>
> Back in February, we announced to a join faculty-industry meeting that
> we would be changing our rates in 2012. Initially, we had planned on
> March 1 to implement the changes, but due to our desire to generate
> some post-renovation-shutdown data, I delayed the implementation. It
> is now set for June 1, based on the rates in the attached pdf. They
> will also shortly be posted on the SNF web site by Mary Tang.
>
> Basic summary is that we are reducing our initial hourly rates and
> increasing the cap and, proportionally, the hours to reach the cap.
> This will reduce the entry level costs for new users and place a bit
> higher cost burden on those users who use us a lot.
>
> The industrial rates shift with the existing proportion to academic
> rates.
>
> The SBIR-industry discount has been slightly reduced from 30% to 20%
> of the industry rate, to match the offset we are receiving via the
> NNIN program funded by NSF.
>
> Three specific tools are staying at the pre-change rate ($92.20/hr):
> ASML, Raith, AMAT Epi.
>
> And finally, the rate beyond upper limit of the cap, which is
> unchanged at 160 hrs, is moving from 10% of the base rate to 25% of
> the base rate.
>
> We hope this will allow us to provide better services to our
> customers. We recognize that cost increases are hard to deal with in
> today's financial situation as we are dealing with those same issues
> in terms of our costs. In addition to make SNF more attractive to new
> users, this does help us offset a couple of years of no COLA increase
> in rates plus allow us to add some additional benefits, one of which
> we have a quote for is a service contract to support the AMAT Epi
> tool, which has been a headache to a number of important SNF users.
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>
> ____________________
> John Bumganer, PhD
> Operations Director
> SNF
> jwb2005@stanford.edu
>
>
No comments:
Post a Comment