The sudden surge and interest in wafer fab e-Diagnostics
03/01/2001
Pieter "Pete" Burggraaf, Senior Technical Editor
COVER ARTICLE
overview
While complex in its IT implementation, the technology for implementing e-Diagnostics between fabs and equipment suppliers is available and the first significant links are now emerging. Early users of this capability are finding ways to address concerns over intellectual property and security, among other issues. The rewards of improved equipment maintainability and availability are being documented. Still, there is a need for more: perhaps a shift in the industry's mindset to fully adopt what is essentially a new business process. Experts are calling for companies to take the lead and be risk takers, implementing more "Internet thinking" to improve industry performance.
 Photo courtesy of KLA-Tencor |
First, the semiconductor industry created the critical ICs to proliferate the Internet and its worldwide information technology (IT) infrastructure. Now the industry is on the brink of harnessing the power of this technology for semiconductor manufacturing control. With momentum building over a short period, there is now industry-wide international support for e-Manufacturing and, more specifically beneficial for equipment manufacturers, e-Diagnostics, where early, albeit cautious, efforts are emerging. (A related development is the growth of e-Commerce capability. See "e-Commerce for wafer fabs" on p. 62.)
Mark Pendleton, VP of consulting services at domainLogix, Austin, TX, notes, "e-Manufacturing activity underway includes systems in place at foundries in Taiwan that allow customers to submit and review order status on-line through Internet portals. [There are also] global data engineering analysis applications that allow fabs and assembly-test facilities to share real-time data."
Part of the timeliness behind this milestone comes from infrastructure. Beth McAllister, VP of marketing for worldwide support operations at KLA-Tencor, San Jose, CA, says, "Technological advances are enabling what will be a massive productivity breakthrough for chipmakers and their equipment suppliers. These include multitasking operating systems; many semiconductor manufacturers are migrating from proprietary software and DOS-based computers to Windows NT based systems. We are also seeing secure high bandwidth connectivity across intranets and extranets, worldwide telecommunications and Internet availability, and increased security by means of virtual private networks [VPNs], encryption technology, protocols, and the emergence of industry standards."
E-Diagnostics has required additional Semi standards efforts for Internet support, specifically the introduction of the object based equipment model (OBEM, E98). Charles Baylis, VP of product services at domainLogix — a company that is developing a commercial implementation of the OBEM standard to provide fab tool access using any of several standards, including DCOM, CORBA, and RMI — says, "The SECS standard is not an appropriate match to the Internet, but an object-oriented standard provides a natural interface, either via HTML in a web browser or via XML for data transmission."
"Essentially, the tool becomes a web server," says Baylis. "The e-Diagnostics initiative requires such enabling technology at a fundamental level. We need to avoid creation of vendor-specific e-Diagnostic solutions that do not inter-operate, which would be counter to the intent of Internet-based support. In sharp contrast to SECS, a native XML interface to the tool would allow our industry to benefit from the tremendous pace of software development on the Internet."
In addition, Baylis sees the need for two other key capabilities that are not available today. Global authentication management is needed to address management of user permissions across companies.
"Even within a company, this is a notoriously nasty job. For e-Diagnostics and other Internet support initiatives, we will need a facility for managing user permissions across companies, and on a worldwide basis. This is a large task, and is absolutely critical for simple yet secure Internet-based support," Baylis says. And there is a need for an XML document type definition specification for tool data sent over the Internet. "An XML document type definition [DTD] describes the content of an XML document. The industry will benefit from a standard DTD for tool data, so that standard software products can be developed to use the data."
Executive mandate
Much of the industry's current buzz over e-Diagnostics goes back to just April 2000 when International Sematech's (ISMT) industry executive forum proposed "establishing an e-Diagnostics program to help guide standards for this emerging maintenance tool." The forum called for assembling "a team to establish the customers' wish list on e-Diagnostics" and getting suppliers to respond "by proposing an appropriate e-Diagnostics program, with a goal of reducing field support costs by 50% [emphasis added]."
Management at ISMT was quick to implement various teams behind its e-Diagnostics initiative; these include a core capabilities team and working groups dedicated to specific issues, such as e-Diagnostics capability, data needs, and data security (Fig. 1).
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By the end of 2000, after just eight months, consortium cooperation on e-Diagnostics had developed into an initiative that included cooperation with Japanese groups. In addition, it had published a one-page high level guide, e-Diagnostics IT security council guidelines (where IT security officers at member companies addressed intellectual property issues), and an e-Diagnostics Guidebook — de-facto standards. As the ISMT effort rounded into 2001, it was moving toward prototyping e- Diagnostics concepts and working on an implementation roadmap and "transition guidelines to standards" planned by the end of 1Q01.
Why is e-Diagnostics crucial?
Many experts believe that future "Moore's Law" successes in semiconductor manufacturing are dependent on the implementation of e-Diagnostics, defined by ISMT as the capability for an authorized equipment supplier's support team to access equipment from outside an IC maker's factory via a network to monitor, diagnose problems or faults, and configure and control equipment to bring it into full productive state rapidly, all within security and safety guidelines (Fig. 2). While e-Diagnostics implementation is an IT issue, the underlying driver is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and associated guarantees. And the metrics for success of e-Diagnostics will be manufacturing "business" improvement, not necessarily advances in wafer processing capabilities. (This suggests its function in the broader term — e-Manufacturing — generally adopted by Japanese semiconductor manufacturers. See Fig. 3 on p. 70)
Consider efficient use of capital equipment as one of the driving forces, says Chris Saso, director of marketing at AvantCom Network, San Jose, CA. "Within the $2 to $3 billion cost of a next generation wafer fab, about 70% is for capital equipment. In use, this equipment is productive <50% of the time." In addition, Saso and others point out that there are a number of intertwining fab operations issues, many of them detailed in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, where e-Diagnostics (or e-Manufacturing) can help:
- increasing demand for shortened ramp-to-performance time, which requires application of expert knowledge using real-time data derived directly from the tool,
- once production is established, a demand to reduce fab bottlenecks,
- the need to reduce the time to return a down tool to a productive state,
- the dramatic increase in control system complexity for semiconductor manufacturing tools,
- reduced acceptance time for software changes,
- demand on equipment suppliers to guarantee throughput and yield, which can only come via remote access to tool-states and parametric data,
- delays in reaching factory experts combined with the worldwide scope of manufacturing locations, and
- the shortage and instability of a highly skilled engineering work force within the fab and at suppliers for service, support, and operation of the tools.
From various sources [1], the bottom line driving today's e-Diagnostics effort is that estimated average OEE is ~50% for processing product wafers. The other 50% constitutes processing non-product wafers, idle time, and unscheduled and scheduled downtime. The cost of being unable to use a tool can be $100,000/hr and the cost of adding redundant equipment can equate to 0.5% of profit margin for each percentage of downtime redundancy.
Saso says, "One can conclude based on mean time to repair [MTTR] data that a 1% reduction in unscheduled downtime across the 50 most critical tools in a factory could provide the order of magnitude industry improvement needed." Saso did add, however, that this is "an estimate, and its validation exists in the future."
"Indeed, while OEE is important, when we talk about goals for e-Diagnostics we often emphasize the MTTR challenge of a 50% reduction," notes Harvey Wohlwend, e-Diagnostics program manager at ISMT, Austin, TX. "The simple fact is that if we can diagnose and fix problems quicker, MTTR will be reduced and tool availability will go up. Also, we are targeting field equipment support costs, addressing the shortage of field engineers and leveraging home-office experts."
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John Field, VP of sales and applications at Symphony Systems, Campbell, CA, says, "Traditional industry productivity driving 'knobs' have been yield, wafer size, and design-rule shrinks. Now, yields are fairly well understood because manufacturers can ramp quickly on an understood process. Design rule shrinks are still a big deal, for sure, but the real opportunity out there is improving equipment productivity." IC manufacturers have not focused on manufacturing efficiency in the past for several reasons, including the fact that IC manufacturing has traditionally been a process-driven industry and that the profitability of manufacturers has relied more on differentiating technology and time to market as opposed to minimizing manufacturing costs, which drives gross margin.
For more than a decade, manufacturers of medical imaging equipment have been using e-Diagnostic technology to reduce repair time and drive maintenance into scheduled activities. Roger Eastvold, VP of iSupport engineering, notes that KLA-Tencor's iSupport e-Diagnostics solution (Fig. 4) is based on a benchmark of the "best in class" medical imaging service provider.
Field says, "IC manufacturers now recognize that equipment productivity offers the most leverage for improving the bottom line, and the use of IT is the key to bringing the supply chain power to bear on this problem."
Fast hurdling
Considering the list of semiconductor industry hurdles, the pace of e-Diagnostics development for the industry has been dramatically fast.
The previously mentioned standards need is certainly one hurdle. Howard Ignatius, director of strategic software marketing at Electroglas, San Jose, CA, notes, "SECS/GEM connections were designed for running and gathering simple-state data and are defined as single point-to-point connections (originally over RS-232 and only recently supporting TCP/IP) between equipment and manufacturing execution systems [MES]. A 'second wire' is needed, supporting popular networking technologies such as TCP/IP and XML, to truly enable e-Diagnostics type applications," he says.
Ignatius also notes that often wafer processes prevent changes to the tools to take advantage of new technologies. "For example, with 'copy exact' equipment policies, if you change a tool, even for e-Diagnostics and its advantages, you run the risk of becoming incompatible with a current process. There is a constant debate between those who are for change for process improvements and those who do not accept any change at all for consistent processes."
Industry proprietary advantage is another hurdle. Saso says, "Two significant hurdles revolve around intellectual property (IP) ownership and data security when setting up real-time access to production tools." But here proprietary information must also be part of the solution.
Dave Hemker, VP of new product development at Lam Research Corp., Fremont, CA, says, "When customers request support, the data they release significantly impacts a supplier's ability to provide intelligent recommendations. With only tool-specific data, the scope and speed of potential solutions may be limited. However, if more process data are provided, such as uniformity, defect, and yield maps, a much more targeted and expedient solution will be possible."
Saso adds, "While IC manufacturers are realizing that they will have to share data with suppliers, and equipment suppliers are beginning to inform customers about all the data that exist on a tool, there is not a simple answer to the IP ownership issue."
In their work to create a third-party solution providing a highly secure network (i.e., one "pipe" into and out of a fab and its suppliers that lessens the IT burden of e-Diagnostics), system architects at AvantCom Network have created classifications that set a foundation for fabs and suppliers to share IP. Briefly described, these classifications enable different types of data to interact inside an IPDMZ (intellectual property de-militarized zone, think of a mortgage escrow account). IPDMZ is a third-party-managed digital storage space where two or more companies deposit data and applications and are allowed to access each other's data and applications based on a contractual arrangement. The rules for access and sharing include what data and applications are shared, who has access, how do they have access, the format of the data, when and where the information is made available, and the conditions under which sharing is allowed.
With this technology, AvantCom has a pilot project underway at IBM's high volume manufacturing plant in Burlington, VT. While this work is ongoing and proprietary, we do know that IBM has selected four industry leading equipment suppliers connecting etch and sputtering operations. At least one tool from each supplier is connected to an AvantCom local hub that publishes alerts and aggregates Semi E10 state information and presents it through the World Wide Web to authorized users at both IBM and the suppliers.
"Basically," says Saso, "immediate alerts through pages and e-mails are sent upon a tool down situation so that mean time to respond and repair metrics can be aggressively reduced. E10 information is used as a baseline to accurately compare tool performance within the same factory or across the world."
Saso says, "Up until now, the fab has been reticent to disclose tool data to suppliers and did not see the return on risk in sharing it. Now that significant potential productivity improvements and cost savings are being explored, there is a measurable 'give-to-get' scenario unfolding. Of course, the industry is still in its infancy and is poised for extensive learning in this area."
One of the equipment vendors learning is ASML, which has just begun to test the AvantCom global intelligent infrastructure that connects multiple tools at ASML's demo lab in Tempe, AZ, with corporate headquarters in Veldhoven, The Netherlands. The e-Diagnostics project will enable ASML to remotely track and analyze equipment operation and performance aimed at reducing downtime and improving both equipment productivity and system predictability and performance. "Simply stated, we wanted to test the AvantCom solution in a simulated customer environment to get a good feel for what it offers," says ASML's Gerard de Zwart, VP of customer support engineering. "Then we will be prepared when customers request this solution."
The security hurdle
As for addressing the security of e-Diagnostics, Saso says, "It is amazing that those worried about this issue happily trade stocks over the World Wide Web. It seems that the industry is more worried about tool information from Lam getting into Applied Materials hands, for example, than about financial information being seen or changed by some third party." Ignatius says, "This is a classic Catch 22. You need the data to fix the problem, but the data is not available on the Internet due to security concerns. Therefore, you end up sending an engineer on site to look at the same data."
Nevertheless, Saso notes that what is emerging is the need for third-party auditing, similar to big-five accounting on the financial side and possibly from Semi.
KLA-Tencor, for example, uses a leading third-party security audit firm to evaluate the design and implementation of its e-Diagnostics product. "This was done voluntarily starting with our first prototype system two years ago, and we have repeated it periodically as our e-Diagnostics effort evolved," says Eastvold. "We found this to be an important first step in the process of qualifying our technology with each fab, a process that includes several detailed audits and takes typically six to nine months to complete with a new customer."
Furthermore, customers are 100% in control of which employees of KLA-Tencor are permitted to access the iSupport system in their fabs, when they can access it, what data they can access, and the duration of the access. As an example of the detail required, KLA-Tencor has implemented multiple layers of security by providing:
- industry standard 128bit SSL encryption with X.509 digital certificates;
- Dial-Back Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol for ISDN implementations;
- IPSec/Triple DES for VPN implementations; and
- the limiting of users to highly secure rooms during access to customer data and tool.
Conclusion
While complex, the technology for implementing e-Diagnostics is available now, making the whole process much different than something like next-generation lithography. "What is required," says Saso, "is an industry mindset shift. Change will need to occur in our industry to adopt these new business processes. Some companies will have to take the lead and be risk takers to carry forth the promise of improved industry performance through the use of Internet technologies and really more so 'Internet thinking'."
Field agrees, adding, "The use of encryption, VPNs, security keys, and a host of other technologies are already well proven in other industries. I see the issues as more philosophical, such as the sensitivity around protecting competitive positions, than technical.
Eastvold at KLA-Tencor says, "There is truly nothing new going on here, only improvements over previous implementations. What is little understood is that the real value of this does not lie so much in having limited information regarding productivity metrics, but in the equipment suppliers' ability to respond to a problem instantly. This requires a comprehensive on-line diagnostic capability combined with the ability to respond to problems with top, system-specific expertise from both an applications and service perspective at the point of failure. Not only must the hook be built into the new generation of products to allow this capability, but a re-engineering of the entire service delivery process, re-training of field and headquarters personnel, and development of new call handling and escalation processes need to be deployed. The technology itself is just the tip of the iceberg."
Data from the few robust applications of e-Diagnostics clearly show the benefits available. Scott Gelke, CEO of Ion, Berkeley, CA, says, "Through e-Diagnostics we have the capability of constantly monitoring ionization systems at customer facilities, providing the user predictive maintenance. Through trend analysis of performance, we have obtained a better understanding of how our products operate 24/7 in customer facilities." This results in more effective maintenance of the overall system with reduced maintenance costs for the user.
An early scorecard at KLA-Tencor indicates that the benefit is real and obtainable. Ken Schroeder, CEO of KLA-Tencor, states, "With e-Diagnostics, our goal is to be able to fix 30% of the problems over a network." To date, data show that 25% of all calls were resolved on-line without on-site involvement. "MTTR for these calls is dramatically lower than the MTTR for calls where no on-line support was attempted."
Acknowledgments
iSupport is a trademark of KLA-Tencor Corp. IPDMZ is a trademark of AvantCom Network Inc.
Reference
- Data extracted from Semi ISS, VLSI Research, and ISMT sources.
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e-Commerce for wafer fabs
One only needs to look around at a Semicon show to recognize that e-Commerce, or at least the touting of it, has become an important focus of the industry. There are various levels of complexity involved here, however.
From the routine . . .
For example, doing semiconductor manufacturing supply transactions via the Internet enables the reduction of transaction costs and cycle time. According to Marcia Rabb, marketing manager with global customer services at Axcelis Technologies, "Transaction costs [between fabs and their suppliers for parts and consumables] are typically reduced by 70% or more when done electronically. One person can process the same number of sales order lines that it takes three people to do without automation," says Rabb. "Furthermore, it can take up to three weeks at times to turn a purchase requisition into an order, but when the process is automated, the cycle time may be reduced to about one day." She notes that an electronic process adds "rules" that automatically move requisitions through the system and eliminates buyer intervention for routine, repetitive orders.
. . . to the next level
At the next level, semiconductor manufacturers with experience in e-Commerce for parts and consumables are "pushing for more because even a good system that automatically generates and sends POs is still completely reactive," says Michael Taylor, VP of business development at netMercury, Fremont, CA. "If a PO is processed more efficiently by a buyer, but only after demand has been established or is even at a critical stage, it does nothing to ensure that the desired products are going to be quickly available or will be staged at the proper location. Further, most parts purchasing for fabs is contractually based, long-term agreements with fixed pricing, where buyers would rather not even be involved in the procurement process," says Taylor. Within the e-Commerce concept, then, "auto-replenishment" shifts buying decisions and parts activity up the supply chain, eliminating the purchasing step entirely.
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Taylor notes, "This system requires connectivity between different enterprise resource planning [ERP] systems and databases to operate, deployed globally via the Internet. It's fundamental to the real long-term benefits of e-Commerce. It will give suppliers real-time information on consumption of products that they can use to plan production of deliveries and eliminate 'whipsaw' effects that result when communication, even when automated, is based on POs."
Even more benefits will be derived when demand is controlled by an advanced planning system that balances demand information, logistics costs, and inventory costs to make intelligent decisions about the quantity of product that should be shipped to specific locations to most efficiently and effectively satisfy the demand. "The resulting systems will be much more proactive than reactive systems in place today and will bring fundamental changes to the way the manufacturing companies manage their parts supply," says Taylor.
. . . eventually to equipment supply
Perhaps the ultimate place for e-Commerce capabilities is in addressing the challenges of getting equipment to semiconductor manufacturers on time within this industry's characteristically steep ramp cycles and within the industry's characteristic tendency to constantly re-order equipment with changes (i.e., improvements); only a few semiconductor manufacturers have adopted a "copy exact" equipment philosophy.
Louise Funke, VP of marketing at BlackHog, Sunnyvale, CA, notes, "Equipment companies are beginning to use Internet technology to improve their supply chain practices, which results in direct improvement of on-time delivery of materials used in the manufacture of the equipment and, in turn, the on-time delivery of the equipment to fabs." She explains that given the tremendous amount of change in these environments, both schedule and engineering changes, procurement professionals are faced with the difficult challenge of assuring that the right parts are available at the right time. Parts shortages are usually the key factor in missing shipment dates of the equipment.
Sara Higgins, marketing manager in the Global Spares Division of Applied Materials, says consider how the process typically works without e-Commerce. The sales team members collect a configured system order with a request date and give the customer a hedged commit date, she says. This date is based on what limited visibility they have back up the chain to manufacturing. Next, they pass it to marketing where the date might be buffered before passing it to manufacturing. Additionally, marketing could look at the order and say, "Customer X doesn't really want that kind of gas line; they need this one." The configuration is changed slightly. Then, manufacturing gets the configuration and it looks nothing like what they need to create a bill of materials, so they research, tweak, etc.
"With this type of process, by the time the system leaves the manufacturing dock, it may look different from what the customer ordered and may be way off from the date they requested," says Higgins. "However, with a solid e-Commerce system in place, these groups can all work off the same documents and information with different views," she says.
John Field, VP of sales and applications at Symphony Systems, Campbell, CA, says, "The key for a tool supplier is knowing the configuration requirements for a given system for a given customer and being able to procure the needed parts to build that system from the myriad of suppliers. Most tool suppliers of complex tools have real problems trying to nail down the detailed configuration needs, and then they have to turn around and deal with lead times from their own manufacturers. This can be especially acute with specialty parts, [such as] gas box tubing with ultra-smooth finish."
"An e-Procurement system that enables a company to respond to changes in their sales orders by quickly and easily changing the necessary purchase orders to their suppliers can make a huge difference in a company's ability to meet their ship dates," says Black Hog's Funke. "Manufacturers need to be able to make multiple revisions of a purchase order without confusing their supplier. The suppliers need an easy, relatively inexpensive way to quickly and simply get those changes from their customers. And both parties need to be able to see the same information at the same time (e.g., current drawing revs, current dock dates, etc.) to minimize errors and reduce cycle time," she says.
Field says, "The key here is not the Internet. It is about driving efficiencies into business processes. The semiconductor industry is archaic in terms of deploying sophisticated, high efficiency business processes. The Internet is merely one available communications medium that can be leveraged to drive efficiencies."
So, with e-Commerce in place, the process works much differently than the old way: An equipment manufacturer takes an order for a system before all options are fully specified because the lead time on the system is generally longer than the lead time on the options. However, once the options are completely specified by the customer, there are some surprises and it turns out that the equipment manufacturer doesn't have all the parts needed for some of the options.
Funke says, "The equipment manufacturer then must scramble to get those parts in house to ship on time. A current order for those parts probably needs to be rescheduled since they were planned for a future system order. When doing this with automated systems — the new way rather than manually — the process itself is fast, easy, and much less likely to result in errors since both the manufacturer and the supplier can see the same information on the original order and any changes instantly. This results in fewer shortages, less material expediting, and more on-time shipments of systems to customers."
. . . but the restrictions.
While e-Commerce is perhaps making more progress than e-Diagnostics in semiconductor manufacturing, the former still faces hurdles.
Trust. Rabb of Axcelis Technologies notes that employing web technology means doing business differently. "In a more traditional business model, suppliers and customers are only willing to share the minimum amount of information about their businesses. To be successful using the Internet, however, companies must move to a collaborative model of doing business. In this model, they build trust and share forward-looking views of their business. Information sharing assures that each party can respond quickly to changing levels of business activity."
Patricia Miller, manager of business systems for global support at Advanced Energy, notes that philosophies on how customer and vendor information should be shared and transferred over the Internet vary greatly. "Some customers are not interested nor willing to log-on to a website to find the information. Some of these customers have created their own websites for vendors to review and deposit information. Others want to be able to access and pull information, store it, and use it as they need it. When information is outdated, they log back on and pull current information. Both sets of customers agree that sharing information between ERP systems is preferred, but all are concerned with security and opening up their ERP systems."
Customer readiness. There is also a degree of customer readiness still missing. Rabb says, "Even though the industry is producing the ICs to provide cutting edge technology to the world, many companies have antiquated computer infrastructures. But now, we are beginning to see many of the top IC manufacturers upgrading their systems and starting to submit electronic orders and request electronic billing."
Here, there is an opportunity benchmark. Other industries have already gone through this learning and implemented solutions. Field says, "The semiconductor industry is notorious for inventing the wheel over and over, and the semiconductor industry is very slow, in general, when it comes to applying benchmarking to drive cycles of learning."
Conclusion
There are widespread high hopes for the success of e-Commerce in the semiconductor industry. Taylor says, "The meteoric rise and fall of e-Commerce dot-coms is not a statement of the real future of the effect of e-Commerce and internet-based connectivity on business in semiconductors or industry in general. The real discussion is about how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain operations. In this area, the Internet provides the basis for some real improvements. The problems are not simple and the solutions will not come overnight but ultimately e-commerce will change and improve a broad range of business processes in this industry."
"By embracing e-procurement," says Funke, "semiconductor equipment manufacturers can dramatically reduce their costs; such as direct materials costs, scrap and rework costs and costs resulting from late shipments. The savings from these cost reductions go directly to the bottom line, resulting in improved profitability and a very quick return on investment."
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e-Diagnostics is merely an aspect of e-Manufacturing
Semiconductor manufacturers soon will give customers, employees, suppliers, and distributors virtual access to fab floors via the Internet. From sensors to controllers; from tools to remote maintenance personnel, tool designers, and the manager's office; everything will be interconnected.
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Consider this prospect: as the shift changes at a fab in Arizona, the test supervisor uses a web browser to review production statistics from previous shifts. The supervisor sees a trend toward noncompliance for a prober, checks the probe-card touchdown report, notes that the probe card is nearly due for replacement, and schedules the repair. She then reviews manufacturing data for a new product. Yield is slightly below limit, so she sends e-mail to the process engineer as well as to the prober engineer to elicit their review and also sends an e-mail to the product manager, who will revise availability projections for the sales force.
Concurrent with the shift change in Arizona, a field support engineer is in Malaysia, having spent the day and most of the evening in meetings with a customer. Before retiring, he checks his email at the hotel and discovers that the prober engineer needs help to resolve a set-up problem. With a browser, he logs into the prober over the Internet and discovers a simple error in the product file. He emails his findings to the prober engineer with a copy of the page from the manual that describes how the feature works.
As a board-of-directors meeting approaches, the fab manager reviews the status of the new product from a remote office in San Jose, California. With a web browser, he reviews projected-to-actual standings for different divisions, including manufacturing test, product development, customer service, and finance. In several cases, he drills into the data to better understand causes. Using this corporate "dashboard" he quickly gathers the information to develop his presentation. He sends e-mail messages to several members of his executive staff requesting that they prepare detailed presentations about the status of each of their departments.
Merely hours into the week, staff from across the enterprise worldwide have easily obtained data vital to improving fab efficiency that would otherwise be very time consuming to access. Such e-manufacturing affords the modification of production schedules on extremely short notice to respond quickly to shifting customer needs or competitive conditions, beyond enabling immediate scrutiny, maintenance, adustment and repair of process equipment.
Howard Ignatius, director of strategic software marketing, Electroglas Inc.