Quest for Continuous Improvement
Peter Singer, Editor-in-Chief -- Semiconductor International, 9/1/2006
It's a redesign! Hopefully by now you will have noticed we've updated the look and feel of Semiconductor International with a new logo design, snappier graphics and other style changes designed to optimize your reading experience.
It's all part of our quest for continuous improvement, which this year has so far included the introduction of editorial video interviews, audiocasts, our 30th technical webcast, and several new e-newsletters addressing lithography, metrology and clean processing.
This all got me thinking about how the semiconductor industry is — or maybe isn't — embracing the concept of “continuous improvement.” I can't pinpoint when the term came into vogue, and it's one of those things that I suspect has started to lose all meaning from overuse and abuse, much like “quality.” But I like it in that it captures what should be everyone's goal in manufacturing: constantly looking for ways to improve efficiency, reduce costs and variability, increase yield and throughput, reduce cycle time and streamline the process flow.
Seeking to find out more, I did what everyone else does these days: I went to Google (continuous improvement semiconductors) and up popped a nice article written by James Hyder, a manufacturing supervisor at Intel's Fab 11X in Rio Rancho, N.M. The paper, which was addressed to the Maricopa Advanced Technological Education Center (MATEC) and Technician Performance Improvement Council (TMIC) at SAME-TEC 2005, is titled, “A Primer: Lean Manufacturing Applications for the Semiconductor Industry.”
What really caught my attention was Hyder's focus on the “4P triangle” developed by Toyota as part of The Toyota Production System (TPS), described in Jeffery Liker's book, “The Toyota Way.” At the bottom of the triangle is Philosophy (long-term thinking). On top of that is Process (eliminate waste), followed by People and Partners and, at the pinnacle, Problem Solving (continuous improvement and learning).
Hyder included a quote from Liker's book relating this to the semiconductor industry, which I in turn include here: “The U.S. has been exposed to TPS for at least two decades. The basic concepts and tools are not new. The problem, I believe, is that the U.S. companies have embraced lean tools but do not understand what makes them work together in a system. Typically, management adopts a few of these technical tools and even struggles to go beyond the amateurish application of them to create a technical system. But they do not understand the power behind true TPS: the continuous improvement culture needed to sustain the principles of the Toyota Way. Within the 4P model ... most companies are dabbling at one level — the process level. Without adopting the other 3Ps, they will do little more than dabble because the improvements they make will not have the heart and the intelligence behind them to make them sustainable throughout the company. Their performance will continue to lag behind those companies that adopt a true culture of continuous improvement.”
Strong words, indicative of the fervor that exists in some companies. These are the companies that encourage Six Sigma blackbelts, compete for and win the U.S. Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (the last semiconductor company to do so was STMicroelectronics in 1999) and, in general, promote a culture where everyone in the organization is focused on solving problems and driving waste out of the organization.
The key to all of this, as Hyder and other continuous improvement champions note, is that long-term thinking requires investing in people and partners. At Semiconductor International, there are two people that I would like to recognize. Big kudos to art director Carol Davies for her hard work, creative enterprise and dedication in bringing our redesign to fruition; and to Aaron Hand, who was also instrumental in keeping the redesign on track.
As far as our business partners go, we are continuing to develop existing relationships, and are quite excited about a new opportunity that will enable us to work more closely with industry leaders, make us more competitive, give us access to a broader range of content, and enable us to further advance the interests of the semiconductor industry. Ooops! Looks like I'm out of space! Check back next month for more details....
