4X Faster Equipment Diagnosis at Leading Chip Manufacturer

Semiconductor — Process Optimization

A leading force in the semiconductor industry, renowned for its cutting-edge innovations, faced critical challenges that threatened its operational efficiency and strategic objectives. The scarcity of expert resources and the complexities of automation processes jeopardized vital KPIs including productivity, cost-effectiveness, and knowledge retention.

To address these issues, the company leveraged Aitomatic DXAs to create a semiconductor optimization AI advisor. The AI advisor yielded impressive results, including a 4x faster diagnosis time, 10% reduced downtime, and the preservation of invaluable knowledge assets, positioning Tokyo Electron for industry dominance in high value-added system solutions across all four sequential patterning processes.

Reduced Downtime

10%

Faster Time to Diagnosis

4X

The Problem

Not Enough Experienced Engineers

As semiconductors continue to shrink in size and become more diverse and complex, with the minimum line width of the latest circuits being no greater than a few dozens of atoms, innovation in the repeated patterning process becomes crucial.

The semiconductor leader, being the only manufacturer offering system solutions for all four sequential patterning processes, faced the scarcity of expert resources and the complexities of automation processes, jeopardizing crucial KPIs such as productivity, cost-effectiveness, and knowledge retention.

Investigating these issues required significant effort and expertise, hindering the company’s ability to maintain its competitive edge.

The prolonged time required for new engineers to reach competency led to operational inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Engineers and operators often had to sift through extensive documentation and data to resolve issues, leading to delays in decision-making, frequent production delays, and increased downtime.

The lack of a streamlined system to effectively utilize expert knowledge and provide real-time guidance, coupled with the constant pressure to innovate in a highly competitive market and the threat of knowledge erosion due to retiring experts, posed significant challenges for the company.

The Solution

Unmatched Accuracy with Aitomatic DXAs

DXAs addressed the company’s operational challenges by providing highly accurate answers to complex questions. With near-perfect accuracy, the agents offer instant, precise recommendations for anomalies in intricate processes like lithography. By digesting long datasheets that engineers previously had to sift through, the agents significantly reduce issue resolution time.  

For instance, when a process engineer needs to design a deposition layer with a thickness of 4 nm, DXAs quickly suggest the precise temperature and gas flow parameters, reducing the number of required experiments and speeding up time-to-results. They analyze problems, identify causes, and provide step-by-step guidance, minimizing time-consuming trial-and-error and optimizing equipment functionality.

DXAs' performance is driven by self-improvement using semiconductor knowledge learned from the company’s experts. As they interact with engineers, the agents continuously learn and adapt, ensuring increasingly accurate and relevant recommendations. Their advanced planning and reasoning capabilities allow them to break down complex information and understand pertinent data, enabling highly accurate answers. This approach facilitates knowledge transfer between junior and senior engineers, reducing the learning curve and enhancing efficiency.

The agents' high accuracy delivers reliable solutions yielding a 4x faster time to diagnosis, a 10% reduction in downtime, and the preservation of critical knowledge assets.

The Results

Reduced Downtime

10%

Faster Time to Diagnosis

4X