Pursuing the Increase of Factory Automation in 200mm Frontend Manufacturing to Manage the Changes Imposed by the Transitionfrom High Volume Low Mix to High Mix Low Volume Production
We regard the stringent adoption of factory automation as the right strategy to efficiently leverage a 200 mm fab's competitiveness. In this article we exemplarily show how the Dresden fab cut its own path in the face of the transition challenge from a high volume low mix fab to a high mix low volume fab. We discuss the advantages of our conveyor type transport system with respect to our automation strategy and its extendibility to direct tool loading. A comparison of our transport system with typical 300 mm performance data and current ITRS requirements [1] is presented. We describe the positive influence of the taken factory automation measures on typical key manufacturing indicators like cycle time, tool utilization, head count efficiency, variability improvement, cost efficiency and quality.
2008 IEEE/SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference