The impact of e-diagnostics - one year later

Initially, the industry viewed e-diagnostics as a way to collect, trend, and extract potential failure points from equipment, as well as to provide the ability for a remote service engineer to gain access to equipment for trouble shooting. As e-diagnostics progressed, the industry needed to implement an e-diagnostics enabling solution that not only collected and analyzed data, but also delivered true added value support with the goal of making tools more productive. KLA-Tencor's iSupport e-Diagnostics program was the first in the industry to design a solution integrating a value-added support program with e-diagnostics technology. During the first year of iSupport connectivity to worldwide customer sites, the program focused on assisting users with "Reactive" and "Escalation" support calls. This paper addresses the background, success cases, and value experienced by many iSupport customers throughout this first year of operation. Additionally, this paper addresses the iSupport road map, where predictive failure monitoring holds much promise.