ISMI Readies Fab Risk Assessment Tool
A risk assessment tool will soon be available for fab safety from Sematech subsidiary ISMI. The tool, developed by Zephyr Environmental, allows ESH managers to create regular reports on how risk controls are being improved. The tool was demonstrated on the opening day of the ISMI Manufacturing Week.
David Lammers, News Editor -- Semiconductor International, 10/20/2009
Fab managers seeking to get a better handle on risk will soon have access to a new risk assessment tool, unveiled on the opening day of the International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI, Austin, Texas) Manufacturing Week yesterday in Austin, Texas. Two days of workshops will be followed by the more formal ISMI Symposium Oct. 21-22, with keynote speeches and peer-reviewed papers.
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Steven Trammell, ISMI |
The ISMI Risk Screening Tool is a freeware tool, available to all companies that seek to download it from ISMI's website. The tool is expected to go live on the site in several weeks, and will be available to ISMI members and non-members alike by the end of the year, said Steven Trammell, a project manager at the ISMI ESH Technology Center.
The tool lists several hundred potential fab risks, ranging from power failures to breaches of waste containment, and users can add their own unique risk scenarios. The emphasis is on reducing risk for an applicable risk scenario by improving the controls, such as replacing manual detection with automatic monitoring, upgrading manual responses to automatic responses, or replacing automatic detection with predictive techniques, said Brett Davis, a project engineer at Zephyr Environmental Corp. (Austin, Texas), the company that developed the tool as part of a contract with ISMI.
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Controls are used to reduce the frequency or severity of risks. (Source: Zephyr Environmental Corp.) |
"The tool is intended for non-risk management specialists," Davis told an audience of 15 ESH managers from companies including Dell, IBM, GlobalFoundries, Infineon, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics.
The tool focuses on "realistic events, where the frequency is not terribly small," Davis said. Nevertheless, it also seeks to raise awareness of risks that managers may assume are small, or events that "they believe will never happen."
For example, a Freescale Semiconductor fab in southwest Austin had never experienced a power outage of any significance in a dozen years. The city's power substation there did not have redundancy, and a short knocked out power to the fab several years ago, causing the company to lose "many millions" of dollars in lost production. The city responded with an upgrade to the substation, but the problem could have been avoided with a more thorough risk assessment.
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The ISMI tool seeks to identify risks so that controls can be improved. |
"The tool provides suggestions. Managers want to think about whether a risk scenario applies to them, and what are the responses," Davis said. The tool includes the ability to create reports, including steps taken to reduce risks and tracking of risk-reduction activities. Companies that use the tool will have the option of sharing their learning with other companies using the risk screening tool.
In a separate but related presentation, Stephen Craig, a vice president at Environmental and Occupational Risk Management Inc. (EORM, San Jose), described methods to quantify the financial costs of risks. In today's strapped economy, companies are striving to reduce costs, including funds spent on ESH activities, requiring fab managers to prove the financial benefits of risk-reduction activities.
"The more you can quantify your risks and the potential impact on business, the more it is understandable by the financial types," Craig said. "The cost and recovery time from time-critical interruptions needs to be quantified in dollar terms so you can justify projects to the financial people."
Fab managers need to quantify their recovery time objective (RTO), and determine an acceptable level of financial risk. Events such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 are relatively rare. But supply interruptions from key suppliers may happen frequently enough that they can be brought into business continuity exercises, Craig said.
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