Methodology for Integrated Failure-Cause Diagnosis with Bayesian Approach: Application to Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Asma ABU SAMAH 1

Semiconductor Industry (SI) is facing the challenge of short product life cycles due to increasing diversity in customer demands. As a result, it has transformed into a high-mix low-volume production line that requires sustainable production capacities. However, significant increase in the unscheduled equipment breakdowns, limits its success. It is observed that in a high-mix low-volume production, product commonality is inversely proportional to failure occurrences and number of corrective actions in each failure. This provides evidence of misdiagnosis for equipment failures and causes. Moreover, equipment is believed to be the only source for product quality drifts that increase the unscheduled breakdowns and result in unstable production capacities. In this paper, we propose two defense lines against increasing unscheduled equipment breakdowns due to misdiagnosis