Advancing High-Tech Ecosystems: Fueling Progress through DoE-Driven Recipe Auto Generation from Active Golden Recipes

The speed of time-to-market plays a crucial role in the success of high-tech manufacturers today. The recipe development process, from Research and Development (R&D) experiments to mass production and continuous R&D advancements, has become one of the most critical phases to achieve this. Now more than ever, high-tech industries are seeking ways to increase the efficiency of recipe development. The recipe management system needs to be elevated to include the R&D process by adopting Design of Experiment (DoE) methodology into recipe management. Creating experimental recipes is now automated, and the effort of engineers can be reduced by up to 80%, with near-to-zero equipment time for the recipe setting. The entire experiment recipe evolution will be well-captured for future reference.

The Role of Recipe Management in Cooperation with DoE Methodology

Recipe creation is a critical aspect of the semiconductor and electronics industry, where precise and optimized processes are vital for product performance and reliability. LineWorks RM is a unique recipe management solution that utilizes an innovative approach to recipe development. The DoE methodology offers a scientific and systematic approach to recipe creation, enabling efficient exploration of parameter space, and optimal output prediction. This recipe management solution offers a recipe creation approach that incorporates DoE methodology.

Practical challenges during DoE recipe creation include:

Equipment time required
To start with a DoE recipe creation process, one must understand the content of an active golden recipe. To do so without a central recipe management system, equipment time is required to view, explore, and understand the golden recipe across different equipment.
Reference data on prior knowledge and experiment
Additional factors in the golden recipe and variation ranges for each factor based on past executed experiments. Conclusions which were not stored centrally, especially data on failed experiments can impact product quality and process efficiency. This causes difficulty to identify the combination of avoidable failure factors during experiment execution.
Engineer time required
Selecting an experiment DoE design with 4 factors and 2 levels minimum run requires generating 8 sets of DoE experiment recipes from a golden recipe set. If the set of recipes consists of 3 different recipe types, engineers would need to create 8 recipes for each recipe type, making a total of 24 recipes to be created. This means engineers would need a few days’ time to create the recipe required.

These challenges may discourage engineers to use the DoE approach for recipe creation
and LineWorks RM is able to extends its capabilities to address these issues.

Recipe Creation Made Easier with LineWorks RM

With the implementation of LineWorks RM, recipe creation processes can be automated using DoE recipe runs. The solution replicates a set of golden recipes or Process of Record (POR) recipes and generates a complete set of experimental recipes according to the DoE matrix values and DoE setup in the recipe management. It is based on the predefined matrix templates in combination with the engineer-selected parameter factors and experiment design to automatically generate all combinations of experiment recipes.

Seamless Traceability with Built-In Version Control
The recipe management system provides features, including DoE design template management and versioning. The design template management allows for easy organization and tracking of design templates, whereas versioning capabilities ensure changes made to templates are well-documented. Such templates allow the engineers to define mean factors for different experiment purposes. For example, Equipment and Process Variability, Material Compatibility and Handling, etc. This seamless traceability capability enables you to have total data recipe management, helping you retain generations of knowledge from a recipe perspective.

Enhanced Collaboration and Efficiency
Total traceability facilitates effective communication, promotes collaboration among team members, fosters innovation, and avoids duplication of efforts. All these features enable researchers and engineers to work more efficiently, resulting in faster recipe iterations and improved productivity.

Precise Parameter Control
LineWorks RM offers precise control over parameter input factors, helping you to optimize your experiments. By having a high level of control, researchers and engineers will be able to fine-tune and adjust various variables of your DoE experiments, leading to more accurate and efficient recipe development processes. Hence, you can achieve higher yields and better process outcomes.

Seamless Recipe Evolution
LineWorks RM facilitates the transition from R&D experiment recipes to mass production recipes. The system ensures that knowledge gained during the experimentation phase is effectively incorporated into recipes during production runs, ensuring a smooth recipe evolution process, and ultimately reduces discrepancies, minimizes rework, and maximizes production yield. This creates a cohesive recipe management framework where you maintain consistency and quality throughout the entire product lifecycle.

Quality and Consistency
During a recipe development process, quality and consistency are crucial. Automating and standardizing the creation of DoE recipes minimizes human errors and other variabilities. The solution extends from R&D experiments to mass production, resulting in reliable and repeatable processes from start to finish, leading to high-quality control and consistent product output.

To sum it all up, a capable recipe management system such as LineWorks RM helps high-tech manufacturers to strengthen their ecosystem by streamlining the recipe creation process, and ensuring the highest standards of quality and consistency are not only achieved, but also maintained. All this translates to higher efficiency, enhanced productivity, and most importantly, increased speed of time-to-market.