Extending the technology envelope of equipment fungibility with single minute exchange die (SMED) novel solution

Semiconductor manufacturing is trending to become more competitive and fast-paced in achieving efficient productivity. While striving to meet the goal of minimizing complexity and cost reduction, the challenges for equipment end user are maximizing its functionality and flexibility. With higher product volumes and increasing number of products requiring unique equipment configurations, it is sound to explore the opportunity on enhancing the features of the equipment to be fungible upon capacity requirement changes, and enable a reduction in dedicated buffer capacity. This paper describes how SMED approach is implemented into the rapid changeover process of an equipment in which the fungibility constraint of equipment features were identified and analyzed. The techniques of SMED approach has not only benefit in equipment flexibility but also the process improvement.