Let's get on with using the Internet on the fab floor
04/01/2001
Peter V. N. Parsons
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The semiconductor industry has been slow to overcome convention and embrace the Internet as a medium to enhance both supply and support, even though the semi sector continues to provide components supporting almost every other medium- and high-tech industry in the world.
The industry is entering the information age slowly. Manufacturers have identified the need for paperless fabs for years yet remain constrained by their fear of providing Internet access (and the portal providing potential access to, and the loss of, proprietary information) on the manufacturing floor.
As an ex-US Navy member performing in top secret environments, I fully understand the need to ensure safeguards are in place to protect information. It is also critical for us to understand that regardless of the safeguards or systems we utilize, the reality is that the safety of proprietary information relies significantly on the individual integrity of our employees and other individuals with access to the information. This is arguably the only thing preventing an employee from pressing the print key and walking out with data.
Support personnel require information to perform their jobs. The time required to perform these tasks is directly affected by the time required to access the necessary information.
Unfortunately this information is usually in hard copy format as either paper or CD-ROM.
I refer to both paper and CD-ROM as hard copy as they are both static-capture methods for information; that is, they both provide information that is only good as of the time it was printed on paper or burned onto a CD. If we can rely on the information never changing this is not an issue. At the same time, very few of us would go to yesterday's paper or a recording of yesterday's news to see the forecast for today's weather.
While information about operating or maintaining process or equipment in a fab may not change as rapidly as the weather, there is a significant volume of information that is of a critical nature and requires immediate or rapid distribution to support personnel and improve equipment and fab operating efficiencies. Information in hard copy creates a tremendous logistics and financial burden for the information supplier as a result of the need to track both individual and group versions and maintain a distribution network. Information customers must also provide resources to support a process to update their hard copy reference library. Converting or migrating data into their own system also requires resources.
The Internet has the capability to provide both training and performance support or, in other words, the right information, to the right people, at the right time. Multiple electronic performance support systems (EPSSs) or knowledge management systems are available today for use by information suppliers and customers. Most of these systems were designed by training and performance support professionals who understand instructional systems design (ISD), adult learning styles, and the performance support philosophy.
The industry's conventional modality regarding training relies on the following model. The model assumes a technical role, although it is not exclusive of other nontechnical scenarios: A technician (or other supporting personnel) is hired into a position and after orientation, is sent to a training class either at a supplier's site or conducted on-site in the fab.
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The training is one to five weeks long and consists of both classroom theory and hands-on lab time. The lab sessions generally provide varying degrees of application or task practice by specific individuals as class size and duration preclude an adequate amount of application. In recognition of this fact and in response to customer requirements, some suppliers provide customer qualification sessions or advanced equipment training programs (AETPs) with minimal class size to ensure that each attendee has enough time to perform each required task on his or her own.
Both of these training or qualification scenarios are tremendously expensive for both the supplier and the customer. The supplier must bear the cost of dedicated capital equipment, overhead, and personnel expense to provide the training.
Customers bear travel and salary expense for both personnel attending training and personnel required to backfill and possibly, in the case of on-sites, the expense of a tool out of production. Finally, there is also significant risk posed to production equipment when training is conducted on-site. The conventional model, in most cases, requires the production environment to provide the most significant component of the learning experience.
By contrast, the following scenario demonstrates the significant potential for a new model. It is generally accepted that depending on the individual, eight to 30 repetitions of a task are required to achieve proficiency. This being the case, an EPSS including both a training and performance support component can provide a significant cost savings for both the supplier and the customer. A web-based EPSS can provide students the opportunity to learn theory and in many instances also provide realistic simulations for task performance.
While there may still be a need for a final hands-on qualification session, this new model improves efficiencies in several ways. As in the prior model, a technician is hired into a position as required by the employer.
Unlike the former model, employees, using a web-based EPSS, can begin their orientation and even their technical learning on-line before they start to work. This results in a tremendous reduction in time to productivity. The newly hired technician can perform as many repetitions of the task or complete his or her training to the extent necessary as identified by the employer. The EPSS provides full functionality to support performance tracking and individual assessment, providing both the employee and employer the necessary information to track progress.
The system allows for an individual profile to be created for each student based on his or her job code or other parameters identifying all training content and scheduling. Once the technician reaches the prerequisite knowledge level identified, he or she can then be scheduled to attend a hands-on qualification session if necessary.
This effectively transfers the most significant component of the learning experience off of the fab floor. Following the final qualification, assuming the technician has continued access to the EPSS, he or she can reference and view operational or maintenance procedures on-line to refresh his or her knowledge prior to actually performing the task on the manufacturing floor.
In many instances the periodic requirement for tasks is well beyond an individual's ability to accurately recall procedural steps, parameters, or hazards. And while the technician could use a hard copy reference for the same purpose, it may not provide the most up-to-date information. Access to performance support can in many instances provide information that allows users to perform tasks, such as simple error recovery, that might otherwise necessitate the intervention of, or the requirement for, additional or senior personnel.
Many production tools can exhibit several thousand error scenarios and it is virtually impossible for anyone to remember all of them. By calculating the cost of equipment down time on the production floor, it is relatively easy to justify the use of an EPSS with performance support if it mitigates even a minimal percentage of equipment down time.
The Internet-based performance support modality provides individuals with rapid access to more information and is less demanding of the need for individuals who must maintain an extremely high level of individual knowledge. The customer stands to potentially realize significant savings in the reduced time to productivity, training expenses, and the number of experts required that must be sent to training or maintained on location.
Peter V. N. Parsons is director of product knowledge and learning systems at PRI Automation, 805 Middlesex Turnpike, Billerica, MA 01821-3986; ph 978/670-4270, fax 978/663-1825, e-mail [email protected].