ROI-based Approach for Evaluating Application for Factory Data Collection Use Case Alternatives

29th Advanced Process Control Conference
Austin, Texas - October 9-11, 2017

The analysis described in this presentation has been developed over the past two years through discussions with the manufacturing automation specialists at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, one of the earliest developers and adopters of Advanced Process Control (APC) technology in the industry. Over a decade ago, as this technology permeated all critical process areas in the wafer fab, its principles were applied to other manufacturing applications, and the entire Advanced Precision Manufacturing (APM) strategy was born. Inherent in that strategy was a fab-wide data collection infrastructure that leveraged the newly defined SEMI EDA standards (E120, E125, E132, E134, and most recently E164), which are now included in the automation purchasing specs for all new equipment.

Despite this level of commitment, inquiring minds still want to understand precisely what the value of more and better data is, because an across the board “just in case” data collection strategy could overwhelm parts of the factory system infrastructure without delivering the promised benefit. In other words, just because data may be available at a high sample rate is not sufficient justification for collecting it continuously at that rate. It may make more sense to use the conditional sampling features of EDA to precisely “frame” the data, collecting it at high rates during brief periods of keen interest, and at lower rates at other times. This and other data collection tradeoffs can be made objectively once the relative values of the various alternative approaches can be calculated.

To answer the “What’s the real value of more and better data?” question, we have analyzed specific application uses of equipment and process data and arrayed them according to the level of data collection capability required to support that use case.

Find out more by selecting from the material available or schedule a meeting with a Cimetrix representative.

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