Building an intelligent e-diagnostics system for reducing mean time to repair (MTTR) of wire bond machines

Abstract

In today's cost driven semiconductor industry, utilizing the available capacity to its maximum limits is of prime importance for being competitive. With the equipments being expensive and the technology changing very fast, utilization of the available resources, by minimizing the repair time brings to the forefront production capacity that would have otherwise stayed hidden or lost. The other key issue that any company needs to address is that repairing complicated machines (such as Wire Bond) requires training of personnel and this leads to extra costs. Thus a system was felt necessary that would incorporate the knowledge base of the most skilled maintenance engineers and also aid in online breakdown diagnosis, so as to reduce MTTR. The e-Diagnostics system that has been developed as a part of this project aims at making a wholesome online diagnostics tool. This e-Diagnostics system also aims to centralize the database of all the wire bonding machines, thus easing the access of information and providing key information, that would otherwise require another tool such as data mining. This system would hence provide a long-term solution to the company, as it can be modified to serve machines other than Wire Bonding machines.