We live in interesting times
07/01/2001
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A day, a week, a month doesn't pass without bringing changes to your respective marketplace—some you expect, some you simply never dreamed possible. But with change comes new opportunity and fresh ways of thinking about the way your operation proceeds. Change is the ultimate catalyst.
How successful you are during changing times depends on how flexible you allow yourself to be and how quickly you're able to adapt. Those of us not afraid to take a chance and risk failure—and eventually learn from those mistakes—will eventually come out ahead.
In our pages this month you'll find several indications that times for cleanrooms users and suppliers alike are, indeed, changing. What risk you'd like to take in order to adapt is up to you.
One of our cover stories, and perhaps one of the biggest cleanrooms business news stories to hit the streets in the past year, is Illinois Tool Works' (ITW) acquisition of The Texwipe Co., one of the cleanroom industry's best-known and respected family-owned companies (see page 1). After 38 years of operation by the Paley family, the company is now part of a $10 billion, 600-company conglomerate with a foot already planted in the door of the cleanrooms market. ITW holds the keys to SIMCO, a static control equipment maker, and Coventry Cleanroom Products, a swab and wiper manufacturer.
Word from Texwipe is that it's business as usual. But Texwipe competitors will certainly fix their eyes on how ITW will approach the market as it bundles its new prize with its existing cleanroom players. Will this change the landscape of the wiper and swab market? Probably not now, say that segment's players. But one can't help but think that with a $10 billion decentralized parent company pulling the strings competitors will need to stay nimble. We'll keep an eye on the company's progress.
For many of our semiconductor readers, the change to 300 mm has, in fact, completely re-arranged the way they approach contamination control. Over the past two years, our semiconductor correspondent Hank Hogan has found that covering the development of 300 mm contamination control is similar to putting together the world's most complicated jigsaw puzzle. But this month, Hogan was up to task yet again.
Hogan says two pieces to the contamination control puzzle are still missing: In the new, fully automated fab, users still need to work on ways to effectively, and "cleanly," split wafers off for measurement, and suppliers still need to figure out how to interface all hardware and software in order for chip makers to go "lights out" with confidence.
This month, we've chronicled the progress the world's 300 mm pioneers have made with regards to their contamination control efforts. All have embraced change, all have accepted certain failures, yet all will eventually come out on top.
Michael Levans
Chief Editor