VLSI Customer Survey Ranks Top Suppliers
VLSI Research Inc. ranked Varian and Novellus as the top large equipment suppliers, based on VLSI's 2009 survey of customers in the chipmaking industry. Disco, Keithley Instruments, Nissin Electric and Verigy were among the suppliers honored for excellence in the equipment categories tracked by the market research firm.
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 5/21/2009
VLSI Research Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) said its 2009 customer satisfaction survey ranked Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Inc. (VSEA, Gloucester, Mass.) as the top large supplier for the fourth year in a row. Varian received the highest rating in 10 out of 13 categories in the survey, which was distributed to >35,000 people working at semiconductor manufacturing companies. Varian’s overall customer satisfaction rating improved to the highest level in four years.
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| VLSI Research surveys >35,000 customers of chip-making equipment in its annual survey. |
Novellus Systems Inc. (San Jose) improved its rating from a year ago and was close behind Varian among the large suppliers, based on positive marks for customer satisfaction and equipment throughput. “Respondents awarded Novellus the highest rating in cost of ownership and commitment,” VLSI Research said. “Novellus tied with Varian in uptime. Customers were more than pleased with Novellus’s best-in-class throughput.”
ASML (Veldhoven, Netherlands) and Disco Corp. (Tokyo) followed in the rankings. ASML achieved the highest rating among its peers in technical leadership, while Disco excelled in process support and field engineering support, VLSI Research said.
Keithley tops in focused suppliers
Keithley Instruments Inc. (Cleveland) achieved the top rank among focused suppliers of chipmaking equipment, VLSI Research said. The instrument and test equipment maker garnered high marks for equipment uptime, software and technical leadership. “Chip producers appreciated Keithley’s equipment and said they provided ‘good performances with good reliability for 20 years of use,’” VLSI Research said. JEOL Ltd. (Tokyo) was ranked second in the focused supplier category, with strong ratings in quality of results and support after sales.
Market sector leaders
Disco was ranked highest among the assembly equipment suppliers, followed by wire bonding equipment maker F&K Delvotec (Ottobrunn, Germany). Accretech-Tokyo Seimitsu secured the third spot for the third successive year amid a “very tight competition among dicing equipment suppliers,” VLSI Research said.
Among test suppliers, Verigy led the field based on its strong product performance ratings, followed by Teradyne Inc. (North Reading, Mass.) and Advantest (Tokyo).
In the material handling equipment category, SUSS MicroTec (Garching, Germany) ranked highest for the fourth year in a row. Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL, Tokyo) and Ismeca (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland) followed.
VLSI Research said that among the small suppliers of wafer processing equipment, Nissin Electric Co. (Tokyo) ranked highest, jumping to the top after sliding out of the Top 10 the previous year. Rite Track (Cincinnati) was second, followed by Oerlikon (Pfäffikon, Switzerland).
