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Customer Challenge

  • The etch equipment OEM from Korea wanted to focus on innovating their hardware practice.

Scope

The client: 

• Required tool automation software for their array of 200mm and 300mm line of etch equipment 

• Required host connectivity software compliant to SEMI standards 

• Wanted a strategic engineering services partner who could take care of the entire software stack – equipment automation, factory automation

Solution

  • Leveraged Quest’s in-house tool control framework - Falcon 
  • The extensive configuration capabilities were used to develop the framework for the functionality and configuration of each equipment 
  • Partnership with Brooks automation and pre-integrated robot interfaces were used to reduce the development time 
  • Device interfaces using custom protocols were developed and integrated into Falcon

Benefits

  • OEM was able to hit market in time and control the R&D costs with usage of Falcon suite 
  • OEM was able to fully focus on hardware development and optimization, because Quest took complete responsibility of the development of automation software and factory connectivity 
  • Intuitive rule-based Scheduler achieved higher throughput than required by customer 
  • OEM benefitted from our world wide fab experience during FATs (Factory Acceptance Tests) at end customer site 
  • High reliability of the software earned appreciation from the customer and was cited as one of the reasons for repeat orders

Features

  • Test automation and Continuous integration frameworks used to improve product quality 
  • Test automation framework was developed, incorporating SEMI standards compliance testing tools like CCS Envoy 
  • Provided post release, 24x7 support 
  • Implemented using local-global approach of Quest with 15% of the development team onsite at customer site and 85% o‑shore.

Automation of Etch Equipment leveraging Falcon