Integration of smed and triz in improving productivity at semiconductor industry

Abstract

A case study on a test handler’s changeover process was conducted in a semiconductor organization (Intel Technology Sdn. Bhd.). The test handler being a constraint operation in the production supports the testing of two of the mainstream chipset products. Though the test handler is capable to support multiple chipset products but due to the equipment configuration complexity, the changeover process today requires an average 4 hours to fully complete. The long changeover duration degrades the overall productivity especially inability to meet customer demand timely, lower utilization and rising cost issues. These identified issues are potential factors that could impact the sustainability of the organization in long run. This case study focuses on improving the changeover process using techniques from Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) and Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ). Both the techniques have individual strengths and weakness and thus the focus will be to integrate them to complement each other to enhance the changeover process duration further. Problems in the current process like non standard practices, complex hardware setup and waste activities that plagued today are process were identified and categorized accordingly. Later, appropriate techniques from SMED and TRIZ were proposed to counter these issues systematically. SMED will be used mostly for task simplification while TRIZ will be used for hardware part redesigns and overall process optimization. The end of mind of this study is to achieve a lean and optimized changeover process that can be performed below 30 minutes with no safety, quality or output concerns.