Tapping the power of the Net
05/01/2000
The drama was intense in 1989 when the Berlin Wall was torn down. TV and media images of the crumbling stone wall offered visible evidence of the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
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Today different kinds of walls are falling all around us—we just cannot see this happening except on computer screens. The Internet and the World Wide Web are changing almost everything about the way we live and work. The impact will be even more far—reaching and profound than the renaissance emerging from the lowering of the barriers between East and West Europe. While open global communication and networking eventually will bring major social and cultural changes, the revolution in industry and business will probably come more quickly and be much more apparent.
A global marketplace of buyers and sellers requires complex supply chains to link customers, manufacturers, and all the middle functions needed to move goods, keep warehouses and shelves stocked, feed orders to manufacturers and distributors, identify what is selling and why, and ensure that invoices are sent and bills paid. In most of today's world, where we still work with mail, phone calls, and faxes, this process is often inefficient and error-prone. Not only is it slow, the cumbersome supply chain between buyers and sellers often prevents good communication. Early attempts to apply technology to make links more efficient, such as message-based phone answering systems, often led to more rather than less chaos.
The semiconductor industry is too fast-paced for that. The existing world of sluggish, often unresponsive supply chains has become totally unacceptable. Markets are being rapidly reshaped while the device technology, process tools, and material sets are all changing at the same time.
Fortunately, the Internet offers an opportunity to save the day. Mike Splinter, senior VP and GM of the Technology and Manufacturing Group at Intel, has complained not only that it takes too long to get process tools and bring them up to yield, but also that vendors need to do more to keep them running. He suggested that Web links could allow remote monitoring and trouble-shooting of process tools, speeding yield improvement and improving up-time. While few tool companies have set up links such as he suggested, new services are springing up to link buyers and sellers throughout the semiconductor supply chain, while individual companies are putting more and more of their data onto easily accessible websites.
Is all of this frenetic Internet activity solving the industry's problems-compressing time and space, and simplifying the complexity that has become a steadily increasing burden? Not yet, not by a long shot. We are just seeing the rudimentary, clumsy beginnings of a new age where any kind of information can be accessed anytime, anywhere.
Take Mike Splinter's example of remote trouble-shooting of process tools. While drift in a process, or increased particle generation, might be detected, what is causing it? Much better monitoring of parameters is needed, especially as proven processes and materials are being replaced, and more intelligent software must be developed to sort through mountains of data to find correlations and probable causes. Trouble-shooting right in the fab can be a headache, let alone trying to get clear insights over an Internet link.
It is easy for management to see the Net as a potential panacea. Throwing resources into putting it to work immediately might eliminate all the nagging problems they keep hearing about, and cut out all those nuisance delays impeding the business. Then, when the links are in place, they may throw up their hands in frustration as slip-ups, schedule slippage, and other problems continue.
If used well, the Net can be an invaluable tool for making our world more efficient. But it will take time and experimentation to find out what works well and what does not. The potential is undoubtedly enormous, but getting there will have to be done step by step, with careful attention to what is realistic and what is pie in the sky. We work in a business, and use technology, which is enormously complex and fast-changing. The Net must be shaped to fit that context. We cannot change the physics and chemistry, and business realities, to make them fit the Net.
Robert Haavind
Editor in Chief