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Toshiba gains an information advantage with visual, interactive analytics

Business Profi leToshiba Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leader in high technology and the world’s ninth largest diversifi ed manufacturer and marketer of advanced electronic and electrical products. Toshiba has some 165,000 employees worldwide.

Application Profi leToshiba has deployed Spotfi re DecisionSite for manufacturing applications to over 12 semiconductor front- and back- end facilities in Japan and plans to roll it out for a variety of business analytics applications in other parts of Asia, Germany and the USA.

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Challenges• Current software tools can’t deliver results fast enough to meet short design-

to-market deadlines on a huge variety and volume of semiconductor data.• Traditional specialty packaged software approach suffers from low

productivity gains and utilization rates plus high deployment costs and risks.• No common platform for analysis or sharing of results slows action on

vital signals and gives inconsistent results across organizations and user experience levels.

Solutions• Visual, interactive analytics helps any user quickly understand high volumes

of complicated data from different sources.• Easy-to-use and quick-to-learn software speeds adoption rates; fl exibility

to adapt to special analysis processes increases end-user success.• Common analysis environment helps users work collaboratively across

organizations; guided workfl ows help create and evolve analysis methods.

Results• Faster manufacturing yield increases by easily combining quality data

with engineering data to fi nd root cause.• Better tool performance by fi nding relationships between product quality,

tool maintenance and utilization time.• Improved process recipe design by comparing process test data to device

performance outputs.• Optimized factory fl ow by analyzing WIP distribution, residence times and

loading conditions.

Spotfi re DecisionSite® gives Toshiba an analysis platform that helps engineering and business users get results faster and continuously improve their problem-solving methods

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ChallengesBecause developing cutting-edge manufacturing processes is so technically challenging, high-tech manufacturers usually select best of breed hardware tools. Toshiba, like other industry peers, has historically taken the same approach for software - a choice that makes it diffi cult to meet critical time-to-market constraints for their high-tech products. Multiple packaged analysis applications have coexisted, each designed to solve different technical problems: an MES system for tracking lot, equipment, and measurement data; a yield system to analyze product functional and electrical test results; a defect management system for studying contamination; a process analysis system for developing and improving process recipes; a supply chain system for tracking materials and products; and many others.

Because each of these systems is powerful and specialized it can also be complicated, and so, often there are only a few people who actually learn to use it effectively, despite the fact that the systems are often purchased on a site-wide or enterprise basis. “We observed that only 20% of the possible users of yield management software, as a packaged application example, actually use it effectively. This is not only because the complicated special features

make it hard to use for many engineers, but also because it only has a part of the data we need to analyze,” said Koji Kimura, a yield manager at Toshiba’s bipolar fab in Kitakyushu. Because there are so few users, the true cost per user is very high to purchase, train for and maintain enterprise level deployments of all of these specialty applications. Moreover, because each application typically contains its own data, solving problems that require fi nding relationships across data of multiple types becomes especially hard.

Reporting systems, on the other hand, are easy to understand for end-users, and can be programmed to give up-to-the-minute answers to known questions, but are diffi cult to maintain for IT departments. Reports are static by nature, so any new question requires more support from the IT department to build another group of reports. Ultimately, reporting systems simply cannot handle the ad hoc questions which arise in nearly every serious manufacturing analysis investigation, but the demand for reports rises anyway because the alternative is learning to use each of the specialty applications that hold the needed data.

This gap between the technical strength of packaged applications versus the ease of use of reports widens when each of the different

“We observed that only 20% of the possible users of yield management software, as a packaged application example, actually use it effectively. This is not only because the complicated special features make it hard to use for many engineers, but also because it only has a part of the data we need to analyze,”

– Koji KimuraYield ManagerKitakyushu Fab

To maintain its manufacturing and marketing leadership in advanced electronic and electrical products, Toshiba must give its engineers and business people the best possible tools to analyze and understand a huge variety and volume of operations, quality and business data from their factories and extended supply chain. As a part of its mandate for business excellence, Toshiba is changing its approach to data analysis and changing what is meant by the “best possible tools”. Toshiba has recognized that they can help more types of users solve more types of analysis problems by taking a unifying approach, connecting Spotfi re DecisionSite to multiple infrastructure systems and building process-specifi c analytical applications on the DecisionSite platform.

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disciplines who must work together smoothly to get the job done is considered – design, process, integration, yield, product and operations engineers and managers each have their own systems and their own reports. Often the only way for cross-functional teams to work together is by sharing paper printouts or exchanging macro-based spreadsheets.

The scope of the problem grows when analysts work in different companies, as happens in the electronics supply chain. Toshiba works closely with its partners in backend packaging and also has several joint venture relationships with companies developing technology such as fl at panel displays and the circuit boards that support them. Ideally, multiple companies working together would have a way to understand data from both sides without a big implementation or training challenge, but this has not been easy with old approaches.

Toshiba was looking for a way to access data from several existing systems and make it easier for more people to understand the root causes of problems and improve the performance of equipment, processes and products. Also, they wanted to do all of these things faster, by streamlining and standardizing workfl ows in multiple areas of their business. When multiple

systems are hard to use, the analysis time for each individual type of data increases, and some users might take shortcuts or miss important signals. Action on factory or product line decisions requires understanding results across different data, systems and people, so the delays can become critical enough to hurt new product development projects or decrease revenue from devices with production problems.

Toshiba wanted to take advantage of the experience of its best experts in solving analysis problems and also make it possible for that expertise to help other engineers get more consistent results. Like any business, Toshiba has users with different levels of experience, ranging from analysts with many years of experience to junior engineers who have recently joined from universities. The steps for an analysis process can be complicated, and so training takes time. It takes experience to understand, for example, which analysis steps to take, and in what order, to fi nd the solution to a spatial signature problem that may require the discovery of relationships between functional, parametric, measurement, equipment and processing history data. Once users develop an analysis workfl ow, it would be desirable to make sure it is used everywhere in the company for consistent results.

“The inventiveness and problem-solving skills of our people in all areas is a great strength for Toshiba. DecisionSite Guides help us to extend and magnify the expertise of our best minds, so they can attack today’s critical business issues, but also create and share tomorrow’s innovative analytical methods.”

– Shizuo SawadaSenior ManagerManagement Innovation Division

Figure 1: Toshiba has found that DecisionSite can bridge the capability gap between powerful but complicated packaged applications and homegrown reporting systems using data from both corporate databases and local fi les. The result is easy-to-use applications serving many users, each tailored to specifi c business problems.

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Figure 2: A trellised profi le chart illustrates a self-organizing map clustering technique, made easy to use through a guided workfl ow for classifying failing wafers (shown in red) using multiple quality parameters.

Figure 3: Interactive displays show the result of statistical analysis comparing good wafers to bad across 33 process variables in a poly etch process. Using this technique, engineers can more quickly identify wafers that might be bad for future processes.

Solutions & Results Toshiba today uses Spotfi re DecisionSite in over 12 semiconductor manufacturing and backend packaging sites because it lets users of all types connect to existing systems and solve problems faster immediately. As an implementation matures, they can create visual and easy-to-understand applications matched to any data and process without any custom coding. The DecisionSite server manages connections to data from multiple systems centrally, and also helps users create and share the analysis methods they use to solve tough manufacturing problems. “At Toshiba, we’ve never seen software deliver productivity gains this quickly or create end-user demand this high, regardless of the department where it’s deployed. DecisionSite helps us to immediately understand signals in data of any kind, but it also gives us a platform to create process-specifi c applications, each with the same fl exibility and visual power as the core product,” said Shigeru Komatsu, Chief Knowledge & Technical Infrastructure Offi cer, Semiconductor Company of Toshiba Corporation. With DecisionSite, Toshiba can have more engineers working toward more and better results, and can enjoy the business benefi ts of problems solved faster than before.

Engineers in Toshiba’s 300mm SOC fab in Oita have used DecisionSite to correlate manufacturing yields from their yield management system to processing history from their factory control system. This helps them troubleshoot yield excursions more easily than trying to work in two separate complicated applications. Because of its ease of use, many engineers use only DecisionSite for yield analysis, leaving the complicated yield system for just a small number of power users.

At its Yokaichi site, DecisionSite was used to help process engineers study the relationship of multiple process variables to the quality of produced parts. “Some of our statisticians have studied how advanced regression techniques can be used to optimize process recipes. DecisionSite makes it possible to take advantage of algorithms in applications our engineers wouldn’t normally know how to use, such as the Mahalanobis distance, by just connecting the algorithm into a Spotfi re Guide,” said Shizuo Sawada, Senior Manager, Management Innovation Division, Semiconductor Company of Toshiba Corporation.

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Operational applications are also useful. For example, at the Advanced R&D facility in Yokohama, engineers and mangers studied factory loading, WIP distribution, and cycle times. With quick visual access to lot movement and queue time information, it became much easier to optimize the overall fl ow of material and make sure important experimental lots were processed on time.

The ease of creating such a variety of technical and operational applications has encouraged Toshiba to also introduce DecisionSite to their businesses in other parts of Asia and the USA for sales and marketing analysis. Shizuo Sawada explained a central idea of the project, “The inventiveness and problem-solving skills of our people in all areas is a great strength for Toshiba. DecisionSite Guides help us to extend and magnify the expertise of our best minds, so they can attack today’s critical business issues, but also create and share tomorrow’s innovative analytical methods.”

Taken together, the fl exibility and ease of use of DecisionSite make it possible for many more technical and business investigators to get access to the data that they need and make important decisions that improve the business. Bridging the capability gap between specialty packaged solutions and static reporting systems using interactive, visual analytics represents a fundamentally new approach to semiconductor analytics.

“At Toshiba, we’ve never seen software deliver productivity gains this quickly or create end-user demand this high, regardless of the department where it’s deployed. DecisionSite helps us to immediately understand signals in data of any kind, but it also gives us a platform to create process-specifi c applications, each with the same fl exibility and visual power as the core product.”

– Shigeru Komatsu Chief Knowledge & Technical Infrastructure Offi cer

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Spotfi re® DecisionSite®

Spotfi re, Inc.212 Elm StreetSomerville, MA 02144 U.S.A.Telephone +1.617.702.1600Fax +1.617.702.1700Toll-Free +1.800.245.4211

Spotfi re AB (European Headquarters)Första Långgatan 26SE-413 28 Göteborg, SwedenTelephone +46.31.704.1500Fax +46.31.704.1501

Spotfi re Japan KK (Japanese Headquarters)Kinokuniya Bldg. 7F, 13-5, Hatchobori 4-chomeChuo-Ku, Tokyo 104-0032 JapanTelephone +81.3.5540.7321 Fax +81.3.3552.3166

www.spotfi re.com

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About Spotfi re, Inc.Spotfi re, Inc. provides interactive, visual data analytics applications and services that empower enterprises and their end-users to improve operational performance and gain an information advantage over the competition. Over 25,000 users in close to 1,000 organizations around the world use Spotfi re DecisionSite to drive confi dent decision making by quickly and easily spotting trends, outliers and unanticipated relationships in critical business data. The company maintains U.S. headquarters in Somerville, Mass., and European headquarters in Göteborg, Sweden. Additional information can be found at www.spotfi re.com.

Spotfi re and DecisionSite are registered trademarks of Spotfi re, Inc. Other company or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Printed in the U.S.A. Copyright ©2005 Spotfi re, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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