EDITOR'S PAGE

The return of relative calm

This year's Semicon West whirlwind has blown past and a relative calm has settled in. With a month or so since the show ended, I've had time to digest some of what I heard and learned there, and have a few thoughts on trends emerging as well as some anecdotal food for thought.

One recurring topic of conversation focused on approaches to continual improvement of chipmakers' productivity. Texas Instruments' Bob Helms, speaking at a luncheon hosted by Asyst Technologies, cited faster yield ramps, better tool utilization, and faster cycle times as key metrics, while suggesting that flexible factories using smaller batch sizes and fabwide automation and isolation could be keys to achieving the needed productivity levels. One equipment maker shortening its cycle times is CFM Technologies, according to Roger Carolin, company president and CEO. He noted that typical cycle times at CFM's new manufacturing facility in Exton, PA, have been reduced to 18 to 22 weeks, with ongoing efforts to push them down even further.

The automation sector changed almost before our eyes in the weeks around the show, with Asyst, Brooks Automation, and PRI Automation now positioned as the Big Three of fabwide and tool-specific hardware and software product lines. Brooks's acquisitions of Smart Machines, Domain, and especially Jenoptik Infab have thrust the Massachusetts-based company headlong into the fray. Asyst's efforts to reinvent itself as a complete provider continued to gain momentum with its preshow launch of a turnkey tool automation package, while PRI consolidated its place as a market innovator with its new 300-mm loadport design that eliminates the pod-door opener. Spurred on by the imminent onrush of advanced 200-mm and early 300-mm fab automation, the concept of overall factory effectiveness, or OFE, has joined the alphabet soup of APC, CoO, IEE, OEE, and other manufacturing performance yardsticks. As Asyst head honcho Mihir Parikh said at the lunch, the "automation portal" now serves as the basis for increased productivity.

Although the merger and acquisition front was a bit less frenzied than the '98 show, one purchase has sent shockwaves through the ultrapure materials suppliers community--Air Liquide and Air Products' joint gobbling of BOC. Confusion ran through the ranks of the press corps initially, as some editors mistakenly thought that the acquisition involved only BOC's gas group, while others grasped the totality of the proposed deal. With little concrete follow-up information since the initial announcement, how the two gas and chemical giants will divvy up the British company's lucrative portfolio remains unclear, with some BOC Edwards's product groups, such as the vacuum pump folks, wondering where they fit into the equation.

As for the marketing wars, you would have had to be blind not to see any Applied Materials hyperbole in San Francisco. After being overshadowed at the 1998 show by arch-rival Novellus's slick copper-age hype, the chip equipment industry's Big Dog went whole hog, hiring flag-waving stilt-walkers to greet attendees outside the Moscone Center entrances, emblazoning buses with AMAT signage, sticking logos ubiquitously on the escalator stairs, and even placing evening chocolates on showgoers' hotel-room pillows. If that wasn't enough already, people woke up to find a full-page "Total Solutions" ad in their complimentary USA Today, not to mention the overpowering presence of Applied's humongous, multiple area-code booth. But like any canine who barks incessantly, sometimes you just want the mutt to keep quiet for awhile.

This just in. . . . SEMI has quashed the rampant rumor-mongering and announced it will definitely not move Semicon West to Las Vegas. This should be welcome news to the scores of attendees and exhibitors I talked with at the show who expressed almost unanimous concern about the possibility of such a move, insisting that the event had to stay in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. SEMI certainly has its work cut out for it, with more segmentation on the drawing board as a possible solution to managing the phenomenal growth of the event.

Tom Cheyney
Editor

tom.cheyney@cancom.com
http://www.micromagazine.com

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