Next-Generation Factory and 300 mm

ISMI’s Next-Generation Factory (NGF) program serves a critical industry need by working to enhance the productivity of existing semiconductor fabs by targeting improvements aimed at increasing equipment and factory productivity; addressing requirements for hardware and software infrastructure; and focusing on waste reduction.

Our mission is to enable an industry collaborative productivity improvement path for next-generation factories that contributes to the ISMI member company targets of 30 percent cost reduction and 50 percent cycle time improvement by 2012.

ISMI is striving to realize a vision for next-generation factory tools that are:

  • Predictable, flexible, and low-variance
  • Linked by advanced materials handling systems and carriers
  • Able to maintain continuous, real-time communications with host systems for all equipment-generated messaging
  • Designed for near-zero variability maintenance
  • Able to provide significantly shorter installation and qualification times, along with reduced consumption of energy and non-product wafers

NGF productivity improvements are designed for retrofitting existing 200 mm and 300 mm factories, while allowing for forward compatibility with 450 mm manufacturing.

NGF Projects

Shaping the NGF program are several projects that are working toward the realization of these capabilities, while actively engaging industry suppliers for input, demonstration, and mutual roadmap alignment with IC manufacturers.

    • Factory for Small Lot Size - identify the factors needed to enable small lot sizes for high-mix or accelerated cycle time factories.
    • Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA) and Data Quality - accelerate the commercial availability and build a supporting environment for the EDA interface. which is critical for enabling and implementing new next-generation factory capabilities. EDA is made up of SEMI standards SEMI E125, E134, E120, E132, and supporting standards.
    • Enhanced Equipment Quality Assurance -achieve intrinsic quality improvement by defining the quality assurance data needed from suppliers and quality management data required by device makers.
    • Predictive Preventative Maintenance - establish industry-wide consensus on guidelines for implementing predictive and preventative maintenance capabilities for factories and suppliers
    • Equipment Chamber Matching - identify methodologies to improve process results in tools using common process chambers through efficient and accurate analysis of equipment data.
    • Virtual Metrology - pursue methodology and requirements for implementing virtual metrology in fabs, which would reduce chipmakers’ dependence on actual wafer measurements.
    • Seamless Cascading - develop scenarios and identify requirements to enable an uninterrupted factory-wide flow of wafers to process equipment.