IC manufacturing science in Europe

To reach a competitive manufacturing level, a development project has been started whose global objective is to develop concepts and to realize practical solutions to having an efficient and competitive IC industry for future submicron technology in Europe, for high-volume manufacturing as well as for custom and application-specific products. The projects focuses on the following topics: equipment engineering, automation for materials and information flow, clean room technology, mask making techniques, quality control, material supply, and industrial engineering. The major issue of the last item, short cycle time manufacturing, is explained, along with the concepts implemented for achieving desired results. After a few months, cycle times as short as two weeks have been reached, and a short cycle time culture has been spread in the company