Experts work to get 300-mm skill standards on right track

Bob Simington and Michael Lesiecki discovered that unlikely fact during their ongoing efforts to develop a set of skill standards for technicians who will work in the highly automated chip factories. The two men aim to write a final document identifying the behavior expected of technicians working in "lights out" fabs with centralized manufacturing and automated material-handling systems. The trouble is, they point out, there is no such animal to study. So, they have had to look outside the semiconductor industry for direction.

MASK AND GOWN: Richard Newman and John Robertson, faculty members at Arizona State University East, suit up for their microelectronics class. PHOTOS COURTESY OF MATEC

The search "gave Michael and me a challenge, because we needed to find what these skills were without access to a high-volume manufacturing fab. So we looked at similar types of situations," says Simington, a human performance technologist with Intel's technical manufacturing group in Scottsdale, AZ. "It's funny, but probably some of the best insight we got anywhere was at a control and dispatch center for the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. There's a room about the size of a football field, cubicles with control consoles in each space, and one person in each responsible for every mile of track in the United States."

Initially, 43 of the 65 persons contacted completed the survey. Another 12 responded after the first flurry of replies. Industry representatives were asked to rate a list of performance criteria on the basis of importance, level, time spent, and difficulty. The project leaders first targeted Intel, Texas Instruments, and IBM.

The Intel Foundation provided a grant for the project, as did the U.S. National Science Foundation's Advanced Technology Education Program. Major commercial supporters are TI, AMD, IBM, Tech Semiconductor, TSMC, Brooks-PRI Automation, Rockwell Automation, VSEA, Applied Materials, and International Sematech, Lesiecki says. Pat Foy, workforce development manager at Intel, played a big role in getting the project started.

Simington, who has spent close to three years working on 300-mm special projects, points out that technicians will use these emerging skills in what Intel refers to as a "Level 7" fab. In a Level 7 plant, all work-in-progress is sent automatically to the right tool at the exact time it's needed there, according to predefined rules. Embedded monitors track the processes in each tool, with statistical process control continuously maintained. Human intervention will be kept to a bare minimum.

"The technician's role will be more focused on what to do if something goes wrong, as opposed to running lots through the fab," Lesiecki emphasizes. "Critical thinking and troubleshooting skills with the process and system knowledge to back them up represent a higher level [of skills] than was previously required."

Asked whether it may be difficult to find qualified candidates, the project manager replies that the semiconductor industry is notable for the high level of communication between the technician and the process engineer. In fact, it's absolutely critical "to high-performance teams. In all of the education programs I'm familiar with, teamwork is stressed. The challenge is to integrate teamwork into every aspect, not just think of it in isolation. So yes, education and training are capable of developing technicians with the requisite teamwork skills."

Capable technicians will be specialists with a broad electronics background and emphasis on chipmaking technology and information technology. A minimum of an associates degree or its equivalent in electronics, manufacturing, microelectronics, IT, or related field will be needed.

The skill standards consist of three components: the working conditions, the expected behavior, and the standard by which the behavior is measured. One of the examples given in a presentation made at the recent Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC) in Boston involves having the technician take a problem wafer lot, correlate the historical-to-parametric data to fix the problem, and identify at least one root cause.

The project team has identified 14 major categories such as operating systems, software and programming, e-diagnostics, manufacturing dynamics, control system network and architecture, and 300-mm technologies. Lesiecki says three of the category skills that may pose the most difficult challenges for a technician are data management, manufacturing dynamics, and metrology.

Concerning data management, he notes that technicians in a Level 7 plant will need to retrieve data from many sources. These include tool logs, automated materials-handling systems, and transaction histories. These skills have resided more in the IT realm until now. As for manufacturing dynamics and automation, the technician will have to understand cycle time, capacity, process flow, manufacturing execution systems, scheduling systems, and escalation procedures.

"This is all relatively new to our current education and training programs at this level," Lesiecki emphasizes.

Finally, a major move to in-tool metrology and remote connection to tools means these advanced functions are new to technicians generally, so "there may be a general lack of current knowledge of these subjects among educators and trainers themselves."

An initial set of standards addressing skills for equipment technicians has already been published. The project team plans to make the 300-mm skills standards document available by mid-July. The standards will initially be only a guide for training programs "and an indication of the type of skills, knowledge, and abilities that are desired by the industry," Lesiecki says. "Their use will be voluntary."

Project leaders expect to revise the standards over time, probably every six months as "300-mm technology becomes more predominant. I would say the use of the standards would mirror the rate of 300-mm implementation."

The rate of implementation, particularly of the lights-out variety, has its skeptics, Simington notes. "A lot of people doubt that we will ever get to that level. They feel it's too complex and has too many variables and that you'll still need human intervention." And Simington himself? "I think it'll be a while down the road, not next-generation certainly, but a little further away."

Eventually, perhaps some valuable data will emanate from a fab Intel plans to open. Simington says that the global chipmaking leader will start shipping product from its high-level 300-mm plant, called Fab 11X, in Rio Rancho, NM, later this year. (For more on Intel's Fab 11X, see the MICRO interview with fab manager Bruce Sohn in our June issue.)

The project leaders hope that the industry will be all aboard when the 300-mm train leaves the station. At the moment, though, it's a ghost train, but Lesiecki thinks that industry has built up quite a head of steam on the subject. "People have been thinking about what the transition to 300-mm [processing] means for a long time. They have a pretty good handle on it."