Deploying an Equipment Health monitoring dashboard and assessing predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance (PdM) is cited by the ITRS as a critical technology to incorporate into production over the next five years to reduce unscheduled downtime and cycle time, maintain high quality, and reduce cost. Equipment Health monitoring (EHM) is a companion to PdM that provides a tracking indication of equipment health. The industry needs to deploy and assess PdM and EHM capabilities to determine best practices for the industry and the potential for cost reduction through deployment of these technologies. Applied Materials is working with both Micron Technology and Intel Corporation on EHM and PdM development and assessment projects, partially funded by ISMI. As a result of these projects a portable EHM solution has been designed and demonstrated that can be deployed “out-of-the-box” to track equipment health, but also updated as more information is ascertained on specific smart health indicators. Also, preliminary PdM results in both projects reveals an ability to predict key downtime event including particle monitor, throttle valve and liquid flow failures. Results were achieved on both CVD and etch tool types.