By David Lammers

One of Sematech’s premier conferences, ISMI Manufacturing Week, kicks off in Austin on Oct. 17th with a central theme of moving to predictive rather than reactive behavior in semiconductor fabs.

Brad Van Eck, the chair of ISMI Manufacturing Week, said the industry is learning to analyze the reams of data coming off of tools on the fab floor, using it for predictive maintenance, advanced process control, virtual metrology, and other powerful productivity and yield enhancement tools.

Sematech/ISMI program manager David Stark will put on an all-day workshop Friday on predictive maintenance, which Sematech calls “Prognostics and Health.” Admission to the workshop is free, Van Eck said, “because we want to get the word out to everybody” about the potential of predictive techniques. James Moyne, a professor at the University of Michigan and an Applied Materials technologist, will lead a half-day tutorial on virtual metrology, and industry consultant and author James Ignizio will present a short course on the impact of variability on fab performance.

The workshops and short courses come before and after the two-day ISMI Symposium on Wednesday and Thursday (Oct. 19-20), with four parallel tracks of presentations. About 80 presentations are planned for the two-day ISMI Symposium on Manufacturing Effectiveness. Van Eck said about 10 percent of the presentations will come from non-U.S.-based engineers, which given today’s tight travel budgets is “not a trivial number.”

Paul Fego, vice president of worldwide manufacturing at Texas Instruments, will present the Wednesday keynote speech, detailing the chain of events — from wafer fabrication through packaging, assembly and test — needed to make a factory work well and deliver on time. Fego oversees more than 12,000 TI employees in seven countries.

John Scoville, a senior director at Applied Materials, will present the Thursday keynote on how predictive techniques can be used to boost productivity and yields. “Prediction is about putting better tools in fab managers’ hands. Instead of being reactive, they can plan for eventualities,” he said.

Scoville said he will describe a roadmap that will lead, by the end of the decade, to sharp increases in fab efficiencies. “There is a lot of data available today which in not being processed, an explosion of data,” he said. Applied and other companies are developing tools which can do mathematical analyses resulting in improved production scheduling and virtual metrology – available today – and leading to future techniques which will support predictive yields.

Scoville said managers will be able to simulate fab behavior and engage in “play forward” exercises. “The simulations of the fab will be continually updated to allow powerful predictive techniques. Fab managers will be able to see what the fab will be doing next week, and make decisions now that will allow the fab to do better still,” he said.

Environment, health, and safety is another important topic during ISMI Manufacturing Week, with the traditional meetings on ESH regulations and a new session on “Nanomaterials Biosafety” with Sara Brenner of the University of Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering as the session co-chair. Prof. Brenner is one of several speakers from CNSE on the nanomaterials topic.

Past ISMI Symposiums have included presentations on the “300 Prime” effort to improve the productivity of 300mm wafer fabs and equipment. However, Van Eck said there is no longer a 300 Prime program per se within Sematech or ISMI.

Also, the 450mm program within ISMI has moved to the new Global 450 Consortium (G450C), based at CNSE and including GlobalFoundries, IBM, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC as the main members. There will not be a 450mm presentation at this year’s ISMI Week, though Van Eck said there will likely be “one-on-one meetings, by invitation only. The semiconductor companies will use the meeting to meet with their suppliers.”

For the last few years, an update on the ISMI 450mm program has served as a highlight of the symposium, typically coming as the last presentation. A Sematech spokesman said details of how the ISMI 450mm program will meld into the G450C effort “are still being determined.”

The ISMI 450mm program gave a presentation during Semicon West in July, with updates on the quality of the 450mm test wafers, improved wafer shipping techniques, escalating numbers of 450mm wafer loans, and other aspects of the wafer transition effort, she said.

Tags: Applied Materials, Sematech

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