OptimalPlus MI at Semicon by Dylan Chatterjee
July 2015, Optimal+ is a provider of manufacturing intelligence software for data analytics in the semiconductor industry. Their software “improves yield, productivity, and quality, with full supply chain visibility.” They provide real time analytics for over 6,000 testers around the world and process over 20 billion chips annually.
Their software analyzes the data it is sent and is able to improve yield, quality, efficiency, and also reduce RMAs. Their software provides analysis at every step of the supply chain, from wafer foundries, to production sites, and even provides support for internal test floors.
Optimal’s software is designed for high yield manufacturing and provides a measurable ROI increase over time by minimizing down time in individual test sites. It also creates a quality index using escape prevention and outlier detection to give each chip or lot a numeric value or multiple numeric values to show the perceived quality based on different factors such as number of iterations to pass, overall wafer yield, equipment health during the testing, etc. Another way Optimal improves ROI is by reducing the amount of RMAs you receive, they do this by doing root cause analysis for all RMAs and collecting all known RMA and warranty data, then creating profiles for the known RMAs and determining whether or not the rule for which the RMA was originally approved was affective by doing a virtual retest. It helps weed out ineffective or inaccurate rules so parts more likely to be RMAs in the future will never pass production in the first place. The software also provides complete yield vs. quality tradeoffs for any decisions it suggests you make.
Optimal+ Manufacturing Intelligence data transformation
Optimal+ has recently announced their newest manufacturing intelligence solution called EXACT that will be designed for not only high volume manufacturing needs but also for new product introduction analytics. This new software seems to be everything Optimal+ has been bringing to the table for years and then some. With their expansion in the manufacturing lifecycle to not only the HVM stage but also NPI they will be able to help provide customers analytics at every part of the production process.
The Optimal+ realtime analytics system is currently being used by major IDMs and fabless semiconductor manufactures (such as Qualcomm) for tracking of the WIP that is running in several lines and facilities through foundry services, at their headquarters facility.
