Behind the Scenes
01/01/2009
by Françoise von Trapp, managing editor and Gail Flower, editor-in-chief
On a picture-perfect day in October, the Advanced Packaging roadshow crew took to the autobahn from Stuttgart, Germany to Hanau, to tour Umicore Electronic Materials. Quite accustomed to the typically utilitarian industrial parks found in most manufacturing regions, we were pleasantly surprised that this campus offered such a picturesque backdrop. Encompassing 11ha with 140 buildings, 10KM of roads, 2KM railroad, and accessible by 1000 staff bicycles, the park is home to 10 companies comprising 4500 employees from 11 different occupational areas. As we walk along tree-lined paths from building to building, Umicore’s tagline “materials for a better life” took on meaning beyond just an eco-friendly, holistic approach to materials manufacturing.
A few weeks later, we headed west to Santa Clara, CA to get a first-hand look at all the goings-on at Pac Tech USA, the US division of PacTech, GmbH headquartered in Berlin, Germany. A well-known supplier of wafer bumping equipment and wafer-level contract manufacturing services provider; we were amazed to discover how diversified the company has become and how wide their business reach has grown.
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Representatives from the entire Hanau operation, from executive management to technicians, greeted us; demonstrating that the Kaizen approach extends beyond the work environment to industry outreach.
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PacTech’s crew met us at the door with smiles as they prepared to show us their California operation.(L-R back row) Gail Flower, editor-in-chief, Advanced Packaging; Shawn Magee, Field Service Technician; Bernd Otto, Application & Customer service Engineer; Axel Scheffler, Senior Process Engineer; Thorsten Teutsch, Ph.D., President and CTO; Jing Li, Ph.D., Quality Manager & Development Engineer. (L-R front row) Dennis Trinh, Process Technician; Charlene Hague, Administrative Assistant; Lan Vien, Logistics Assistant; Fatima Boungnasiri, Engineering Technician; Htoo Htet, Logistic Assistant; Mario Aspiras, Production Technician; Mausumi Sarkar, Sales Support Manager.
Umicore Electronic Materials, Hanau-Wolfgang, Germany
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Our tour began with lunch in one of the 3 canteens located on the campus. The open, organized atmosphere was consistent with the company’s operating philosophy, and was carried through to the manufacturing floor.
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The Electronic Materials business unit product line includes advanced packaging materials, and extends beyond to include hermetic sealing materials, spheres for CFL and FTL energy saving lamps, and more.
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Marco Müller, group speaker, and Heiko Kirch, process coach, demonstrate the paste filling machine.
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This is what .5M Euro worth of gold looks like.
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Production area of EPM in Hanau. Particular attention has been given to aspects such as material flow and cleanliness.
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Frank Heringhaus, Ph.D., manager of EPM’s Hanau activities, explains the lost time accident recording chart.
PacTech USA, Santa Clara, CA
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Before beginning the tour of operations, we met (L-R) Takahiro Okumura of Nagase & Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, the majority investor in Pac Tech USA who was visiting the U.S. operations in Santa Clara; Mausumi Sarkar, sales support manager, and Thorsten Teutsch
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Bernd Otto, application & customer service engineer displayed a wafer carrier with taped wafer, previous to wafer sawing to Flower.
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Otto shows how the SB2 Jet plus equipment delivers placement rates of up to 10 balls per second via laser solder ball bumping on a fluxless, maskless, wetable surface suitable for wafer-scale CSP, flip-chip, BGA, optical component attach, MEMS, hard disk drive assembly or 3D packaging step with capabilities from 40µm to 760µm solder ball sizes.
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Mario Aspiras, production technician, measures Ni and reducing agent by manual titration for calibration of the automated plating line.
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Axel Scheffler, senior process engineer explains to Flower how the Pacline 2000 automatic wafer processing equipment handles electroless bumping in this Ni/Au deposition process for under bump metallization (UBM) in an automated wet chemical production process using proprietary Controllomat and QualPac software.
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Scheffler also explains how the PlasPac 200 uses plasma descum to clean 200mm wafers in a gang-style arrangement.
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Kuong Luy, production operator, does final inspection of a bumped wafer.