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Advanced manufacturing is one of the most important development and is pushing manufacturing (across industries) towards a new era. Several criteria decide whether a given manufacturing industry stands to call itself an advanced one. These criteria (not set) have been around for a while, and the manufacturing world is embracing the changes to enable advanced features to provide quality products to the market.
What Is Advanced: Solutions Deployed In Manufacturing Environment That Improves Productivity, Quality, And Time-To-Market But Still Requires Human Guidance.
There are four information points to identify the advanced manufacturing industry. These are Data, Equipment, Process, And Automation. Together, these four attributes provide a clear view of advanced manufacturing.
When it comes to the semiconductor industry, these four feature points are already in use for a long time. Thus, it will not be wrong to say that the semiconductor industry is already in the advanced mode and might be marching towards the super-advanced phase.
Data: Capturing And Analyzing Semiconductor Manufacturing Data Is Already A Well-Established Process.
Equipment: Semiconductor Manufacturing Flow Is Already Equipped With Advanced Equipment.
Data, for example, has been a part of semiconductor manufacturing for decades. It has enabled flavors of processes and also captures issues on the go, a must-have feature for advanced manufacturing. Similarly, the high-level and never-used equipment that creates billions of devices in the smallest area is already part of the semiconductor industry, another must-have advanced manufacturing process.
On top of the data and equipment, the semiconductor industry also has several process checks to make the products without any errors. This process has been key to enabling silicon products to reach billions of people around the globe. The fundamental reason these processes have become error-free is due to the automation usage in semiconductor manufacturing.
Process: Semiconductor Design And Manufacturing Process Are Already Designed To Be Error-Free.
Automation: Automation In Semiconductor End-To-End Flow Is Already At An Advanced Stage.
With all these advanced manufacturing features already deployed as part of process control, the question is – what is the next step? The next logical step might be the step toward super-advanced manufacturing.
What Is Super-Advanced: Solutions Deployed In Manufacturing Environment That Improves Productivity, Quality And Time-To-Market Without Human Input.
Super-advanced manufacturing will remove the need to provide human input at any process step. While the semiconductor manufacturing process is already capable of working without human effort, there are still several areas where process error correction requires human intervention. In super-advanced manufacturing, human intervention will be none. However, semiconductor manufacturing will take several years (even decades) to achieve this state.
As new FABs and OSATs come around the globe, the deployment of advanced manufacturing will increase further and might also pave the way for the super-advanced semiconductor manufacturing roadmap.
