“Onshoring” is ushering in an era of explosive growth in the semiconductor industry with billions in manufacturing and research funding being committed by both government and private industry. Significant manufacturing capacity will be created over the next decade from both expansions of existing fabs and building entirely new fabs. The dramatic increase in semiconductor manufacturing capacity also raises some unanswered questions: Where will the skilled talent needed to run these new or expanded fabs come from, and how long will it take for all of this new capacity to ramp up and reach volume production? Currently most fab process engineers spend 40-60% of their time on fire-fighting process variation issues. To be able to support more fabs, changes will be required. Independent of workforce development, AI Process Control will be an essential core competence for semiconductor manufacturers to help manage critical staffing issues and accelerate the production ramp for new fab capacity.
Data scientists, process engineers and technicians are in very short supply today, and this shortage will not end anytime soon. AI Process Control solutions provide a multiplier-effect for these critical roles, leveraging their collective knowledge and expertise across the entire fab. From a fab manager’s perspective, AI Process Control will enable new Fabs to accelerate the ramp and stabilization of new production lines and product changeovers, maximizing production throughput.
AI Process Control is the next generation of both Advanced Process Control (APC) and Fault Detection and Classification (FDC). It is not a replacement for either capability, but builds on both of them, and leverages the existing skilled knowledge of the data scientists, process engineers, and technicians in the fab, providing fab-wide visibility into critical process steps, rapid root cause analysis of multi-variate process anomalies, and the ability to implement real-time, adaptive closed-loop process control for any tool in the fab.
In this presentation, Jon Herlocker will discuss the advancements that have taken place in the area of AI Process Control, use cases for new and existing fabs, and real customer success from the application of AI Process Control that is delivering measurable ROI for Smart Manufacturing.