The manufacturing equipment in semiconductor factories—both frontend wafer fabrication and backend assembly, packaging, and test facilities—are arguably the richest sources of data about how well the production processes are being run. This data is used in the calculation of every KPI (Key Performance Indicator) used by a wide variety of stakeholders to manage day-to-day operations, from yield to cycle time to equipment and factory productivity to… the list goes on. And for each of these use cases, effective visualization tools are essential elements of the system.
Moreover, with the increased adoption of edge computing devices in high-tech manufacturing environments, scalable cloud-native systems that can process and store enormous amounts of streaming data in near real time, and AI/ML-based algorithms that can provide insights into the root causes of a wide variety of manufacturing problems and even predict incipient failures before they occur, the need for intuitive, interactive visualization technologies is ever increasing.
Despite the continuous improvement in the most automated industries on the planet, the lack of detailed visibility into equipment, process, and overall factory behavior is still cited as a limiting factor for smart factory management. One reason for this is that human domain expertise is STILL an integral part of the manufacturing process, and these people must have access to timely, accurate, complete information to make sound decisions.
This presentation covers many of the semiconductor manufacturing use cases that depend on advanced visualization technologies to give participants an appreciation of the breadth of activity involved in such an enterprise, and highlights areas of promising future work that can leverage the advancements being made every year in the visualization domain.
Posted by: Jixian Li