A process control strategy based upon device performance metrics

An application has been developed with the intended purpose of reducing device performance variation. Its main goal is to provide visual and statistical guidance to the process matching activities across toolsets by showing the process owners how the process affects device metrics. Standard Shewhart, EWMA, and Student's T statistical tests are performed on interacting device metrics and process operations. The user can view the test results in a simple red light/green light summary table on the web. The result at IBM Microelectronics has been a reduction in mean time to detect process and process equipment that are negatively impacting functional yield.