Semiconductor design rules and process windows continue to shrink, so we face many challenges in developing new processes such as 300mm wafer, copper line and low-k dielectrics. The challenges have become more difficult because we must solve problems on patterned and un-patterned wafers. The problems include physical defects, electrical defects, and even macro defects, which can ruin an entire ...

This paper presents a degradation-based model to jointly determine the optimal burn-in, inspection, and maintenance decisions, based on degradation analysis and an integrated quality and reliability cost model. Degradation modeling plays an important role in reliability prediction and analysis for many highly reliable components and equipment, when the failures can rarely be observed. Unlike tr...

1 abstract The importance of the inspection process has been magniied by the requirements of the modern manufacturing environment. In electronics mass-production manufacturing facilities, an attempt is often made to achieve 100 % quality assurance of all parts, subassemblies, and nished goods. A variety of approaches for automated visual inspection of printed circuits have been reported over th...

Thanks to intensive research over the past two decades into viable prevention strategies that can work even in the lowest-resource com munities, we now have an extraordinary opportunity to address cervical cancer in developing countries, where 80% of the mortality occurs. These prevention strategies include visual inspection with acetic acid, human papillomavirus (HPV) testing (both linked to t...

Reverse logistics, as defined by the European Working Group on Reverse Logistics, is the process of planning, implementing and controlling backward flows of raw materials, in process inventory, packaging and finished goods, from a manufacturing, distribution or use point, to a point of recovery or point of proper disposal. In the broadest sense, this process involves collection, inspection, rec...

The benefits of open architectures are not currently available for most manufacturing equipment. We describe a testbed for experimenting with an open architecture controller for an inspection system. An initial taxonomy of categories of openness is proposed, culminating in "plug and play," which does not require a software rebuild. The testbed and its constituent components are described with r...

Inspection robots are popularized in substations due to the lack of personnel for operation and maintenance. However, these inspection remain at level perceptual intelligence, rather than cognition intelligence. To enable a robot automatically detect defects power equipment, object recognition is critical step because criteria infrared diagnosis vary with types equipment. Since this task not bi...