RFID implementation in inventory management of wafer cassettes and probe cards in wafer testing houses

Wafers, wafer cassettes, and probe cards are critical assets for wafer testing houses. Any mistake will cause tremendous damage to wafer owners and to the testing houses. These assets shall be carefully stocked in stocking facilities such as stockers, nitrogen cabinets, trolleys, and testers with a reliable tracking system which can provide accurate and real-time inventory information. To register the individual locations of the assets, the most popular technology implemented today is the Barcode systems. Barcode is mature, stable, cost-effective, and widely implemented in various applications. However, Barcode is not fully automatic nor real-time, nor 100% accurate due to the possibility of human errors. A revolutionary technology of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is implemented to resolve these problems to achieve 100% accurate inventory information with real-time and automatic acquisition of asset locations.