Accelerating R&D learning: Cycle time reduction of a Technology Development (TD) fab

With the increasing pressure of time-to-market, Cycle Time (CT) reduction of the semiconductor industry becomes more and more important. Many literatures have addressed the CT reduction of semiconductor manufacturing. Actually, the R&D portion of the semiconductor industry takes a big percentage of the overall time-to-market. In this paper, we focus on the CT reduction of a Technology Development (TD) fab and summarize the best practices from this real world operation.