SBIR Phase II: Real-time Economic Sampling System

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will create a first Real-time Economic Sampling (RES) system for quality intensive high-tech manufacturing. Focusing initially on semiconductor manufacturing, the system will allow defect inspection sampling to be optimized and adjusted many times per day across all process tools, steps, and products. This minimizes, among other things, a manufacturer's economic risk of producing bad products by adaptively focusing sampling where it gives the greatest return. The complexity of the underlying interdisciplinary models have hindered the realization of RES. Recent advancements by the applicants showed feasibility that this research will build on. There are three main research categories, 1) Risk & Optimization, 2) Cycle-Time, and 3) Yield Modeling. Categories 1 & 2 build on Phase I feasibility results where fast, yet accurate, approximations of complex factory models were established. Risk & Optimization modeling will introduce near-term risk due to factory floor events into traditional (long-run average) risk models. Cycle-time research will refine the approximations for queues with heterogeneous servers. Yield modeling will introduce novel real-time yield approximations needed for RES. The included implementation tasks will then create the first factory-ready RES system that captures the necessary intricacies of semiconductor manufacturing. The proposed RES system is a "Green Manufacturing" enabler that creates a new market as it will be the first to recoup inefficiencies present in many process control operations. The initial focus is on semiconductor manufacturers who are limited by time-consuming off-line analysis, rigid sampling rules, and risky ad-hoc sampling adjustments. Meanwhile valuable products are being wasted due to out-of-control incidents and/or under-utilized inspection capacity. The proposed system can change this. An RES system belongs to a fast growing segment of the semiconductor industry: process control. Other markets can also be pursued and a societal impact due to reduced waste can become widespread.