ADVANCED CIM ENVIRONMENT FOR MANUFACTURING DATA-ANALYSIS

The Harris Semiconductor Manufacturing Systems organization has releas ed a new environment for performing complex analyses of semiconductor manufacturing processes and IC products in its facilities worldwide. T his innovative analysis toolset has increased the productivity of engi neers by providing a method for complex manufacturing data reduction w ithout the need for exhaustive training. The interactive, forms-based interface utility has also provided significant reductions in the time required to isolate parameters and identify relationships that signif icantly influence manufacturing yields. With little knowledge of data structures, query languages, or the underlying statistical analysis so ftware, users of the system can access data in a variety of Harris wor ldwide locations and generate complex ad-hoc queries that result in st atistics, histograms, box plots, and scatter plots. The more sophistic ated user can enjoy the benefits of an open system. The foundation of the system is the internally developed, Unix-based Manufacturing and E ngineering Data Base (MEDB). MEDB is a fully automated system for coll ecting and loading in-line manufacturing parameters, sample probe, waf er probe, and package test data from a variety of equipment platforms. The system is comprised of Harris proprietary database management sof tware wrapped around the commercially available INGRES relational data base product. Maintenance of the system is almost entirely automated, with validations occurring at several stages in the data collection pr ocess to verify data integrity prior to making the information accessi ble to the user.