KLA Tencor Corp. has some of the most demanding customers in the world — semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel, Toshiba, and Sony — which are constantly pushing the technology envelope to develop smaller and faster integrated circuits.
A few years ago, KLA Tencor, which manufactures photomast inspection and other semiconductor equipment, realized that, in order to meet customer requirements, it needed manufacturing processes that were both flexible and capable of producing high-quality equipment. To achieve that, the company in 2000 embarked on Project eQuality, an initiative centered on the implementation of a unified manufacturing execution system (MES) intended to boost quality by giving the company unprecedented real-time visibility into manufacturing processes.
The project not only achieved improvements in first-pass quality, but it also helped KLA Tencor cut cycle times by 60% and, within two years, increase overall productivity by 18%. KLA Tencor was also able to reduce incidences of non-conformance by 55%.
“I don’t think we could deliver the products with the level of sophistication and in the cycle times without this control system in place,” says Peter Gaudette, KLA Tencor’s senior director of operational excellence. “It’s a fundamental enabler and the control and learning it provides has enabled us to drive our cost and cycle times significantly.”