YIELDMANAGEMENT
driving the need for such software and what will be
the impact on production output and performance?
We believe the driver for this type of tool is the
increased competition. In previous years
companies could sell virtually everything they
manufactured. Now there is increased competition
there is more pressure to build higher efficient
wafers at a lower cost. Improved enterprise level
process monitoring and control is the most cost
effective way to do that.
As with the early Semiconductor industry the PV
industry has been developing and piecing together
an ad-hoc internal system. Usually these systems
are a combination of analysis tools created by
several users. This type of system can serve an
immediate need, however over time they become
cumbersome to maintain and their usefulness
quickly becomes outgrown. The cost of
maintaining and at times restructuring these
internal systems can be quite high. With more
effective integrated tools the engineering resource
can focus on improving the process. An enormous amount of data is required to make
such software viable from every aspect of the
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manufacturing process to ensure realistic data.
What are the potential cost benefits to a PV What has Rudolph done to assist manufacturers in
www
manufacturer and could the use of such software inputting data without taking up an enormous
.solar
assist PV in reaching grid parity and further market amount of time?
acceptance?
-pv-management.com
More work needs to be done in this area. Rudolph
There are several key cost benefits for the PV is still reasearching the range of data collection
manufacturer. These benefits will play a role to methods available in order to determine the
help the PV industry reach grid parity. most appropriate methods for improving
ring6 Increase average cell efficiency by more quickly process integration within this industry. Our
Issue I 2009
identifying tools impacting efficiency (increase experience integrating the vast variety of
cpk). This will result in higher margins which in metrology, test, and MES systems used in
a highly competitive market may mean selling semiconductor manufacturing will be invaluable
cells at lower cost but still making a profit. until standards can emerge.
ring6 Reduce scrap costs by more quickly identifying
tools and steps impacting performance or
breaking samples.The trick and challenge is in
not alarming on individual sample failures but How specific can Discover Solar be in identifying
in recognizing a systemic failure. manufacturing issues?
ring6 Reduce engineering costs by automating tasks
such as report generation, root cause analysis,
and line monitoring.
As the solar industry begins to adopt wafer id and Discover Solar breaks a manufacturing issue into
wafer batch tracking root cause analysis can be two components; the process or cell test
automated to identify tool issues down to a parameter out of control and the process tool it
subcomponent of a process tool such as a tube came from. This data can be used to determine
and zone within a diffusion furnace. any issues and pinpoint the origin of such issues.
Pinpointing specific tool problems quickly via The level of detail increases as more tracking data
Discover Solar would minimize the need for inline is supplied. For example, if equipment tracking,
experiments designed to manually identify the wafer batch, and wafer id are supplied the system
under-performing tools. can pinpoint down to the subcomponent of a tool.
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