CIM strategy for semiconductor FAB - Building blocks approach

The semiconductor manufacturing process is very complicated The operations are performed on different tools, supplied by different vendors, forcing many semiconductor manufacturers to adopt computer integrated manufacturing (CIM). The challenge in integrating semiconductor-manufacturing environment comes from connectivity and configurability. The CIM strategy for semiconductor fab described in this paper, is developed using building blocks. The building blocks can be seen as a collection of resources - both physical and functional, which can be used individually. These building blocks interact within a loosely coupled framework for task execution, thus allowing the flexibility of adding/changing functionality with minimal in;pact on the existing system. This is demonstrated by adding various optional building blocks like real-time data acquisition and advanced process control blocks to the CIM application. The base application framework has been used to integrate more than 250 semiconductor-manufacturing tools from various vendors at TI semiconductor fab.