Track 3 Session 2
10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Tuesday June 9, 2009

Successful Application of Reliability Centered Maintenance to Semiconductor Equipment

To achieve precise nano-scale geometric structure on wafers, it is very important to maintain semiconductor manufacturing equipment smartly. Currently, there are three maintenance strategies: 1) run to failure or breakdown maintenance, 2) time-based maintenance, or 3) usage-based maintenance. The most often used strategies are time-based maintenance and usage-based maintenance for the equipment that cannot afford the run-to-failure cost. The problems with a time-based or usage-based maintenance strategy are that we waste a lot of good material when parts are still in good condition and also we may run into equipment breakdown if the equipment parts fail before the pre-defined maintenance time. Either case will yield unnecessary product cost. So we proposed to apply a reliability centered maintenance approach to the management of our equipment maintenance plan. With several key aspects and key statistical techniques, we successfully applied the reliability centered maintenance approach to semiconductor equipment and saved costs in the manufacturing line.

Key Words: Reliability, Maintenance, Quality, Equipment Assessment

John Mao and Ambika Balasubramaniyan
Intel Corporation
Santa Clara, California