Semiconductor
Factory Automation
About Semiconductor Factory Automation –
Semiconductor factory automation consists of two parts,
(Physical Automation) actually moving material around , and logical
(Material Execution Systems) keeping track of where the material has
been , and what's been done to it. I've worked in both portions of the
industry.
The physical automation portion
which consists of the Automated Material Handling System (AMHS),
which physically moves material around the factory. Typically
the 300mm standard breaks this down into Interbay, which moves material
within one processing bay, and can deliver material to the process
equipment, and IntraBay which moves material from one portion of
the factory to another (such as from incoming inspection to lithography)
The diagram at right shows a third portion, entitled
the tool interface, in which the intrabay automation system hands
off the material to the equipment.
In a 300mm fab (like the ones you see in some
of the Intel commericals) the tool interface is set by a standard.
The wafers to be processed are contained in FOUP's (Front Opening
Universal Pods) The FOUP's are tranferred to the tools using OHT's
(Overhead Tracks, more common) or AGV's (Automated Guided Vehicles,
less common)
AMHS systems for Semiconductor facilities are
made by the following companies.
PRI-Automation (Factory Systems Division) -
Now Brooks Automation
Daifuku
Murata
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The host control (shown in the above
diagram as the Factory Software) portion of a factory automation system
consists entirely of process control
software,
in
which material
and
processes can be tracked as products move through production.
This
is actually the more important portion of the factory automation
system because it allows material to be tracked through the fab,
reduces the
possibility of misprocessing, and allows optimization of equipment
usage. In addition the newest innovation is what's known as Advanced
Process Control, using the results of one process step to dynamically
effect other processes. In
essence these systems called Material Execution Systems (MES) usually
serve as a key aspect of many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
solutions for manufacturing faculties.
A partial list of vendors for Semiconductor Material
Execution Systems (also known as a Factory Host)
FACTORYworks™ (Brooks Automation)
WorkStream™ (Consilium - Applied Materials)
Promis™ (PRI) [now owned by Brooks!]
Poseidon™ / SiView™ (IBM/ITS)
LG CNS - of course this is the team that does the automation work
for LG.
ProcessWORKS™ (Adventa Control Technologies Inc)
Example
Description of SiView Standard - IBM's solution
Standards
The standard interface which almost all semiconductor
Fabrication equipment supports is known as SECS/GEM, which stands
for Semiconductor Equipment Communications Standard, General Equipment
Model.
And is defined by a few standards (E5, E30 etc…) published
by SEMI, a loose affiliation Semiconductor Equipment and Materials
vendors.
For more information on the automation standards click
here.
Trends
I guess it wouldn't be right to say all this stuff
without the disclaimer that many of the companies mentioned on this
page no longer exist, the company iteself may have been bought, the
product which they made either abandoned, renamed, or integrated with
other products.
I should put in a plug for APC as well, it's a sub-system
of Material Execution Systems. A company I worked for briefly
was working on was developing a large scale system to implement APC,
which stands for Advanced Process Control. I think it should really
stand for Active Process Control, as it's a way to constantly tweak
a process so that it can be maintained within higher tolerances.
For more trends in the industry click here
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