Getting a Grip on the E-Manufacturing E-lephant
Peter Singer, Editor-in-Chief -- Semiconductor International, 7/1/2002
Most people know the story of the blind men of Indostan and the elephant: Each man felt only one part of the elephant — its side, tusk, tail, leg or trunk — and concluded, respectively, that the elephant was very much like a wall, spear, rope, tree or snake.
This parable comes to mind whenever I'm presented with a new view on the subject of e-manufacturing. To some, it's primarily an issue of e-diagnostics. Others believe it's all about data management, advanced process control or supply chain management. And yet others see the main goal as factory efficiency and yield improvement. To be sure, it encompasses all of these functions and goals, but what's missing, from my perspective, is an overall sense of what it's all about and how all the various pieces and "solutions" fit together.
Of course, it's not at all fair to accuse anyone of not being able to see the big picture — the elephant as it were — since e-manufacturing is a novel concept and only just beginning to evolve. The full e-manufacturing picture may take years or even decades to develop.
So where are we today? To answer that question we invited experts in various fields to provide their outlook on the important trends and challenges in the world of e-manufacturing. In this issue, and on our Web site, we present their contributions in seven different feature articles.
GE Cisco Industrial Networks reports on the importance of the IT infrastructure , and how newly emerging enterprise Ethernet infrastructures can enable leading-edge productivity solutions like e-diagnostics and wireless networking.
Advanced Energy expands on the Ethernet theme , describing how the semiconductor equipment industry can significantly shorten the process of establishing an intra-tool connectivity standard by employing an architecture with separate control and data networks, intelligent subsystems to reduce data transmission, and the use of the XML for transferring data.
TEL describes how advanced process control strategies were implemented at two different customers: AMD and TI, and note areas where more industry cooperation is needed.
Excelerate Technologies and August Technology, members of the new APiA consortium, write about software automation for an advanced packaging line and describe how the implementation of standards can lead to increased efficiency and cost reduction.
Exclusively on our Web site, you'll find an excellent article from Helix, one of the pioneers in remote e-diagnostics, where the authors share lessons learned and provide some tips on supply chain management and e-JIT. You'll also find an article from Oracle High Technology Industries on e-manufacturing in the collaborative workplace, which also focuses on supply chain issues. Finally, George Heath of Axeda describes the first successful implementation of the e-diagnostics guidelines defined by International SEMATECH.
Hopefully, these articles will collectively give you a better idea of just how large the e-manufacturing elephant can be, and how diverse its many parts are. We might also want to keep in mind the end of the parable, captured in a poem by John Godfrey Saxe:
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
Although the moral of the blind men and the elephant parable is mostly about religious tolerance, it might be well applied to the semiconductor industry. As we move to make e-manufacturing a reality, it's in everyone's best interest to work together — on industry standards for example — and not get caught up like Indostan's blind men, each arguing a different perspective.
