Welcome to the final issue of Volume 18 of the FabTime newsletter. We hope that you are all having a happy holiday season. In this issue, we are pleased to announce the launch of a new FabTime.com website. We also share a link to some SEMI webinars that we think subscribers may find useful. Our software tip of the month is about sorting stacked bar charts by height. We have two subscriber responses to the last issue, about core practices in transitioning a factory from R&D to production.
In our main article this month, we share FabTime’s required reading list for new employees (mainly programmers). We explain our motivation for starting off with these titles, and include brief reviews of all four. We feel that understanding the concepts in these books can make our employees more effective, and at the start of a new year, we would like to share that possibility with our subscribers.
In this issue we have two FabTime announcements. The first is about the release of software patch 109. The second is about our latest training webinar. Our software tip of the month is about how to open a new chart in a new tab. We have no subscriber discussion this month.
Our main article was inspired by our attempts to help a new customer as they move from a development environment to higher volume manufacturing. We mine our years of experience in working with wafer fabs to propose three core practices and six categories of key metrics for volume factories. We believe that all of these may help this new customer (and other readers, of course). As we have not personally run a wafer fab, however, our musings have raised a number of new questions. We are hoping that some of you will be inspired to share your experience in this area, which we will then disseminate in the next issue.
Welcome to Volume 18, Number 4 of the FabTime Cycle Time Management Newsletter! We hope that you are all enjoying the summer. In this issue we have a community announcement about an upcoming conference that we think may be of interest to subscribers. We also have a subscriber response to the previous issue about managing late lots.
In both our user tip of the month and our main article we focus on metrics for tracking availability variability. Overall availability is an important driver of fab capacity, of course. But it is the variability of downtime, especially unscheduled downtime, that makes it difficult to manage on a day to day basis. In this article we discuss two metrics for quantifying availability variability, one more suited to day to day reporting and the other more of an in-depth analysis tool. As always, we welcome your feedback.
In this issue we have a brief announcement about our first webinar-based training session. Our FabTime user tip of the month is about a shortcut for opening multiple home page tabs quickly. In our subscriber discussion forum we have several responses to the last newsletter topic of fab shutdowns. We think you'll find them interesting.
In our main article this month we discuss using root cause analysis to better understand lots that miss their due dates. In addition to providing a structure for such analysis, we suggest some ways for using the outcome of the analysis to catch future lots earlier, before they become late. As always, we welcome your feedback.
Our FabTime software tip of the month is about toggling the display of data values on bar chart series. Though we have no new subscriber discussion, we have used that section of the newsletter to share two recent papers that we think will be of particular interest to our subscribers. The first is about sources of variability in wafer fabs. The second is about breaking up long PMs to improve cycle time.
Our main article this month is about temporary fab shutdowns. We discuss the reasons and general types of temporary shutdowns, the ways that people prepare for planned shutdowns, and recovery from shutdowns. We also discuss the impact of fab shutdowns on factory systems, particularly reporting systems. We would appreciate any feedback from newsletter subscribers who have real-world experience in managing shutdowns from the fab side.
In this issue, we are pleased to announce the imminent release of software Patch 108, containing lots of great new functionality. We also have an announcement about the upcoming Fab Owners Association Collaborative Forum. Our software user tip of the month is about generating a list of tools that have been down for more than some time period (e.g. 12 hours), using the new E10Age filter. We have no subscriber discussion in this issue, though we do welcome your questions and feedback.
In our main article this month we share highlights from Make It Stick, a book about the science behind successful learning. Because making significant improvements often involves learning new things, and because all of us face opportunities for learning and growth in our personal lives, we felt that this topic would be of interest to the newsletter community. We welcome your responses.
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