Factory Digital Twin

Semiconductor factories often have data in separate places that are useful and valuable to combine. Depending on the specifics of the systems that store the data however, there are often practical difficulties that complicate such efforts. With the FPS Data Warehouse, these struggles disappear. Everything is smartly organized in one place.

Combines all important data sources:

• MES
• AMHS
• Equipment Integration
• Fault Detection
• Advanced Process Control
• Statistical Process Control
• Planning
• Any other systems

Once the integration is done, it's done. 

All FPS Applications now have a common platform on which to run. When we install our products at your facility, we install the same software regardless of the type of system you have.

This unique architecture also allows the same data and common calculations to be used on every web page or report. So you can be confident that a number on one report will match the same number on another report. 

Read our article on Smart Manufacturing and Digital Twins.

Semiconductor fabs have been getting smarter and smarter over the past 30 years. It’s a natural evolution –  the direct outcome of numerous continuous-improvement efforts. The really important difference on the road to smarter fabs, the one change that’s enabling the Industry 4.0 revolution, is the concept of a cyber-physical system or digital twin.

At the start of a project we develop the Extract, Translate, Load (ETL) process to bring all relevant data into the warehouse. We are experts at retrieving the data we need and leaving a light footprint on the sources. We use everything from database links and 3rd Party reports to shell scripts to read from any data source -  structured databases, spreadsheets, flat files, etc. We have never met a source we can't work with. 

The FPS Digital Twin automatically calculates cycle time (CT) and throughput (THP) from lot event data, and provides sophisticated look up architecture with intelligent fill-in logic to use it effectively. The Data Warehouse always has a best guess for when a lot will finish on a tool, or arrive at an operation 6 steps away. Why is this important? CT and THP are the data that FPS Factory Schedulers use to look into the future and optimize schedules, and that Next Move relies on to call out upcoming actions. 

We have seen many automatically calculated THP and CT data sets, but few tools that help assess the quality of the set. We also provide all the tools needed to understand the statistical quality and accuracy of the data. Our comprehensive throughput analysis can quickly identify tool sets where event data is not reliable enough to generate good data, and where external or manually overriding data should be used. 

The same Digital Twin product serves all of our clients. With dozens of distinct and diverse facilities currently using the Digital Twin, this has put constant pressure on our developers to solve client requests always in a general, rather than a site-specific way. As a result, our Data Warehouse is a repository of industry knowledge and best practices. We compute and store a huge array of useful and value added quantities that many clients do not think to ask about but are delighted when they discover them in our system. Besides key features like Enhanced Tool Performance states, Enhanced Cycle Time, and Throughput, there are smaller statistics like transit times, lot ships, line balance quantities, test wafer data, and more. When a new client gets the FPS Digital Twin, they are getting solutions to problems and requests from more than a decade of diverse client feedback.