Model Based Semiconductor Factory Automation for Rapid Factory Startup and Change

Building the semiconductor automation system for a new factory is typically expensive and time consuming, with custom built software integration and business processes linking many applications. To address this time and expense problem, applied materials has created a factory automation framework to integrate applications and model business processes. Providing a set of predefined business processes and models further reduces the time required to build a factory automation system. Manufacturers using this model and framework based approach for their factory systems report very good results both in ramp time to production volumes and in making rapid changes subsequently.