Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

With the new year, comes a major new initiative for Cimetrix to grow the markets for its products.  The company used the transition to 300mm manufacturing to establish a leadership position for its current product portfolio in the semiconductor industry. However, the company is starting to have success expanding into adjacent vertical markets that includes disk drive, display, LED, and photovoltaic. The objective of this new initiative is for Cimetrix to leverage its experience, technology, and product portfolio gained in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing industry to expand the markets for Cimetrix products. We will be exploring new opportunities in our current adjacent markets as well as possible new markets such as SMT and electronic assembly.

To head up this initiative, Ranjan Chatterjee has joined the company in the role of Vice President, Emerging Business and Technology Office. He will focus on extending and introducing Cimetrix’ portfolio of products into Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) initiatives by interfacing manufacturing equipment with big data and analytics tools. The data generated by devices connected via Cimetrix products can also be enlisted to bolster another methodology often used with lean manufacturing—Six Sigma. With the improvements in cloud and big data tools and infrastructure, one can use these methodologies on data with much bigger volume, velocity, and variety. This enables process control and a lack of variation of products. Processes can be monitored and corrected in real-time instead of inspecting machines merely at completion, and eventually this will help improve yields and reduce scrap. Specifically, manufacturers will need to establish a robust data infrastructure that works across the broader array of machines on the shop floor while breaking down protocol barriers so the machines can communicate effectively and in real time.

Manufacturers will also need to establish a bidirectional data flow so they are not only collecting information from equipment, but also pushing control back to the machines to optimize their usage. Manufacturers that can capture the right information, sift through it, and use it at the right time will be the ones that succeed.  Cimetrix intends to be a leader in enabling this vision. Ranjan’s decades of experience at Motorola and in the industry as a whole in software development, big data, cloud, process control, and lean manufacturing will enable Cimetrix to both adapt and develop products and partnerships to enable a robust ecosystem for a compelling solution.

Ranjan’s relationship with Cimetrix is not a new one as he is a former client. While at Motorola, Ranjan oversaw the development and deployment of a standards-based factory control system for SMT and assembly, which encompassed 24 factories around the world, and connected to over 20,000 pieces of equipment using the first generation of Cimetrix connectivity software. At that time, it was the leader in cell phone manufacturing and the largest purchaser of SMT equipment in the world. More recently, Ranjan has worked with companies developing and deploying systems using cloud technologies, big data analytics, and various modern technologies with a global software development team.

Ranjan is extremely excited to join the Cimetrix team as he sees many opportunities to leverage the latest cloud and big data analytics with Cimetrix core expertise and product portfolio into new markets for Cimetrix. He sees great potential for expanding Cimetrix in this new direction and we here at Cimetrix are looking forward to Ranjan leading the way.

If you are interested in discussing possible business opportunities and/or partnerships with Cimetrix with this new initiatives, please fill out our contact form to reach the Emerging Business and Technology Office.♦

I believe that 2015 will be viewed as a significant turning point in the history of Cimetrix. When I accepted the role and responsibility of president and CEO of Cimetrix in 2001, Cimetrix was a publicly traded company. In addition to the normal challenges of running a business, Cimetrix was required to comply with all SEC reporting obligations. When the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) imposed additional financial reporting obligations with increased internal controls, Cimetrix was required to spend even more time and money. I’ve always believed if you are going to do something, you should do it to the best of your abilities. Consequently, Cimetrix dutifully fulfilled its quarterly SEC reporting and SOX compliance obligations. Every year independent SOX auditors performed the required annual audit and their reports always concluded that there were no material weaknesses in our financial reporting or internal controls.

For a small company like Cimetrix, we can be proud of these accomplishments. We are very thankful to have had Jodi Juretich as CFO for these past eight years. Jodi managed the company’s financials and was responsible for preparing all of our SEC filings. For those of you not aware, the SOX laws include significant personal liability for the CEO and CFO in the event of any material errors or misstatements. As a result, while we had no idea how many people might read our SEC filings (other than the fact that we know our competitors all meticulously read each and every one), each filing had to be reviewed not only internally, but also by SOX compliance consultants, auditors, lawyers, and the board of directors. Significant management time and precious time with our board of directors was spent reviewing and approving SEC filings. As I hope everyone can appreciate, this represented a huge burden for a small company like Cimetrix. In addition to the hard costs that we estimated at approximately $250,000 per year, it is difficult to overstate the amount of energy in terms of management time and attention that went into reviewing and approving not only the financial statements, but the mandatory narratives for these quarterly SEC filings.

Since the introduction of SOX, many public companies have made the decision to go private, and we received a lot of advice over the years that Cimetrix would likewise be much better off as a private company. As you can imagine, however, there are many factors that go into such a decision. We always considered what is best for our shareholders, clients, and employees. Accordingly we were careful and patient in waiting for the right opportunity. From our perspective, that opportunity arose last year, which allowed us to go private without the need for external capital or any dilution to our shareholders. We believe it was an excellent use of the company’s cash to remove the ongoing “tax” of being a public company, which we accomplished in late 2014.

As I reflect back on our first year as a private company, there were a number of highlights in 2015.

• The change in management focus has been remarkable. From the board-level to the daily and weekly operational meetings, the focus is now centered on clients, products, and strategy. How can we better serve our clients? How can we operate more effectively and efficiently?

• Maybe the timing was coincidental, but Cimetrix also completed a major corporate organizational restructuring in early 2015. We involved ten of our key employees in an off-site workshop to map out the type of company we wanted to be going forward. Using an experienced coach and facilitator, we spent time reviewing and reaching agreement on “core” items including our shared vision and values, identification of our core customers, what is our promise to our clients, what is our long term “big hairy audacious goal,” and, equally important, what are the things we should stop doing. We identified the key functions of the company and the people with the best skills and experience to lead those functional areas. The result was a much flatter organization with opportunities for some of our most experienced engineers to assume more management responsibility. It was a very energizing and invigorating process that aligned the entire company on the path forward.

• We also made the commitment to go through our product lines and address all outstanding issues. Over time, the number of product issues that were not urgent or high priority had been slowly building. We made the decision that in order to position the company for faster long-term growth, as well as to reflect our values and brand promise to our clients, we should refresh our current product lines and drive the number of outstanding issues down to zero. This strategy will greatly reduce the long-term costs of maintaining our product lines going forward, as well as further improve the quality and performance of our industry leading product lines. It was wonderful to see the cooperation of our different departments work through the full database of all reported issues and reach resolution. During 2015 we completed new Service Releases for our GEM and GEM300 product lines, which included SECSConnect, CIMConnect, and CIM300, that resolved all reported issues and significantly increased the test coverage for each product. Our Product Management group coordinated the effort to resolve all issues with appropriate stakeholders. Once the backlog of work was clearly identified, our Software Engineering group accepted the challenge and took great pride in doing the work they had wanted to do, but never had had the time, to improve our products and significantly increase the level of automated tests.

• As part of the strategy to improve our customers’ experience using Cimetrix products, we expanded our customer support group into a “Client Training & Support” group with an enhanced staff of senior engineers. Their responsibility is to demonstrate Cimetrix products during the sales cycle, train new clients, and serve as proactive technical liaisons as our clients progress through the critical development cycle. Initial feedback from clients has been outstanding. In particular, I had one new client tell me that in his experience, it is natural for the level of support to fall off a bit after they place an order for a product. However, in the case of Cimetrix, we provided a very high level of attention and support during the sales cycle, and once they placed the PO, they were pleasantly surprised to see that the level of attention and support from Cimetrix actually increased. While they have had problems with other suppliers “over-promising and under-delivering,” their experience with Cimetrix has been overwhelmingly positive, as our software does what we say it will do, and we provide very responsive and passionate support with senior engineering staff.

• We have been at the forefront of the new industry standards for “Interface A,” or its alias “Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA),” for over ten years. When these standards were initially conceived and driven by representatives from Intel and AMD, we thought these new standards made logical sense and would ultimately be adopted by the industry, but we had no idea how long it might take for these standards to be adopted. A large semiconductor foundry in the industry has become the leading user of EDA. Our strategy has been to work closely with this company and the large number of equipment makers that selected Cimetrix’ CIMPortal Plus product to meet the company’s requirements for EDA. While Cimetrix did this facilitation work on our own dime, we believe this investment has paid off handsomely as we’ve helped many of our clients achieve good success in this company's factories, and, as a result, we now have very appreciative clients all over the world that serve as solid references for Cimetrix and our EDA products. In parallel, our Sales and Account Management team has been evangelizing the benefits of EDA to other semiconductor manufacturers. The list of companies now implementing some aspect of EDA has grown to include industry leaders such as Globalfoundaries, Infineon, Inotera, Samsung, Toshiba, and TSMC. The biggest news was Samsung announcing plans for an EDA pilot project in 2016. In a recent briefing to local Korea-based equipment makers, it was reported that some large equipment makers such as Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron developed their EDA solutions in-house, but “most of the rest use Cimetrix products.” To respond to these opportunities, the Cimetrix Sales and Account Management group worked quickly to establish relationships, distribution channels, and local sales and support for Cimetrix products in Taiwan and Korea. While Cimetrix has great partners in Japan, we have learned that each country is different and customers prefer to receive support from companies within their own country, in their native language. Dave Faulkner and Alan Weber logged many miles this year explaining the best practices for EDA and establishing these very important relationships for Cimetrix, which we believe position Cimetrix to sell and support our products more effectively within these markets. In 2016 Cimetrix is scheduled to exhibit in industry trade shows in Korea, China, Taiwan, and Japan that we believe will lead to new clients in these growing markets.

• Lastly, even though we are no longer required to publish SEC filings, we maintain the same high level of internal controls and fiscal discipline. The only difference is we don’t go through the seemingly endless quarterly reviews and narratives. The semiconductor capital equipment market is widely reported to have declined during 2015 and is expected to be flat for 2016. Cimetrix has noticed similar trends among our client base. During 2014, Cimetrix was profitable every quarter with total revenue in the $6 to 7M range with over $500,000 of adjusted EBITDA. For 2015, we continue to operate profitably on a quarterly basis and expect to have similar full-year financial results as 2014. We expect to end the year with close to $2M of cash and, of course, no debt.

Going Forward

Going forward, industry analysts predict a decrease in semiconductor capital equipment spending for 2016. Cimetrix has a number of irons in the fire that we hope will counteract the overall industry trends and enable us to grow next year. We have some major clients in adjacent markets that have the potential to contribute increased revenue. We also hope to get some traction from our efforts to add new clients and grow revenue in the Taiwanese, Korean, and Chinese markets. However, as we have learned over the years, it takes time to develop such new markets, so we are not planning to see large increases in revenue in the immediate future.

By working closely with our clients in semiconductor and adjacent markets, we have identified a number of opportunities for new products. We plan to continue to invest in our current product lines for GEM, EDA, and Equipment Control, as well as look for opportunities to develop new products in conjunction with industry leaders.

If I sound excited about the future for Cimetrix, it is because I am. We have a great team here at Cimetrix and we added a number of solid new team members during 2015. While we have made great progress, we are never satisfied, and will strive for continual improvement as we pursue closer relationships with our clients, improvements in our efficiency and effectiveness, and above all, building great products that help our clients be successful and perform well for those they care about.

I want to thank our clients for the faith and confidence they have placed in Cimetrix’ products and team members, our employees for their passion, dedication and commitment, and our shareholders for their patience that we believe will ultimately be rewarded.♦

In our November EDA-related blog, I covered highlights of the Factory System Infrastructure topic shown in the figure below, and emphasized the need to have a long-term architectural vision to guide the development of a scalable data collection and management environment. Today’s topic completes the picture by summarizing the kind of Manufacturing Applications that can leverage a factory-wide EDA implementation. Unlike infrastructure software alone, these applications are what really provide the ROI for the process engineers and other factory customers of the manufacturing IT department’s efforts, so it is important to understand the scope and requirements of these key applications early in the strategic planning process.

Even though Cimetrix is principally in the business of providing software products that enable equipment suppliers to provide data using EDA technology to the factory application developers that use the information in their production systems, we’ve been involved in this process for many years, and have a good idea of the dominant uses of this data to improve manufacturing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). So in this blog, I’ll cover a little of the high-level picture of what applications fully leverage EDA data.

First and foremost, it is very easy to connect a basic EDA client to a piece of equipment, upload its metadata, and collect information about that tool’s behavior, so implementing a generic “quick-connect production monitor” independent from the fab-wide data collection system is a very common use for EDA. Moreover, if the model in the tool is compliant to the E164 (EDA Common Metadata) standard, you can make a lot of assumptions about the names of the modules, the wafers, the substrate locations, the process jobs, etc., since all of this information is standardized. As a result, you can quickly get an idea of what the equipment is doing, what recipes it is running, what wafers are being processed, and how well the tool is performing with no custom software whatsoever.

Once this is accomplished, the next step most process and equipment engineers take is to more fully characterize the tool’s behavior, so a very common use of EDA is simply improving equipment and process visibility. By inspecting the equipment model, you can see all the events and parameters that are available to be collected, plot them in Excel or on real-time strip charts, or pass them to other analysis applications.

After the equipment has been characterized, the first major production application most fabs will implement is multivariate fault detection (MVA FDC). This is actually the predominant application of EDA data in the industry to date, because in order to do well-architected fault detection applications, one must “frame” the trace data very carefully. High-speed data collection is usually only required in a small number of specific recipe steps after certain conditions have been established, so you can use EDA’s powerful event-based trace data collection to frame the precise data you want, and pass that on to the multivariate control and fault models.

Of course, once you understand a tool’s behavior and have good fault detection capability, you then start to use EDA data to compare tools across a fleet. You would normally want a set of similar equipment to behave in the same way, but perhaps you have one tool that performs exceptionally well, and you’re not quite sure why…In this case, you do what’s called a “golden run” analysis on that equipment, and compare the key trace variables in one with like variables in similar equipment to see where the differences are, and try to explain why those differences exist. Other names for this class of applications include chamber matching and tool matching.

Another key application that we’re starting to see significant interest in is external sensor integration. Factories are now starting to use EDA to present information collected from independent sensors alongside the information collected directly from the equipment. Sharing a common equipment model across these systems effectively “unifies” that data, so the downstream analysis applications believe the information was collected from a single, integrated source. The EDA metadata model offers an ideal way to accomplish this unification.  

Finally, in many advanced wafer fabs, it is important that substrates do not “sit around” after they’ve been processed. Minimizing inter-process wait times is especially important for some advanced processes, so knowing a priori—the precise moment that a lot is going to complete—is a critical capability so the material handling systems can be scheduled to pick up that material and take it to the next process. EDA provides an ideal way to make these predictions generically for multiple process types using the information that is required in the equipment model.

We’ll address these last two applications—external sensor integration and lot completion estimation—in more detail in later blog postings, but I wanted to get you thinking about these ideas early in the discussion of real EDA usage in semiconductor factories.

There are many more EDA application ideas and examples we could share at this point, from component fingerprinting to wait-time waste analysis to dynamic sampling for wafer-level feedback control to feature extraction for predictive maintenance…but these just scratch the surface of what factory customers will come up with once they experience firsthand the flexibility and power of EDA in their factories. More later as this creative process unfolds!

To schedule a time to discuss your EDA needs, click here to set-up a time to talk with one of our knowledgable experts.♦

In my October 27th blog, I wrote about the Equipment Automation topic shown in the figure below and stressed the importance of developing good equipment purchasing specifications from the outset to ensure the company’s manufacturing objectives can be met. Given the number of EDA pilot and production projects currently active across the industry, it’s likewise important to consider what kind of Factory System Infrastructure will be necessary to support a full-scale EDA deployment… so the purpose of this posting is to highlight this topic for the semiconductor manufacturing IT professionals who may face these challenges soon.

However, before diving into a detailed design process for an EDA factory system, you must decide what overall system architecture will govern that design. A number of factors go into this decision, including 1) the functional requirements that distinguish EDA-based data collection from other more traditional approaches, 2) technology constraints of the existing factory systems, 3) budget limitations, 4) schedule requirements, and especially 5) the non-functional requirements (scalability, performance, reliability, ease-of-use, etc.) that often make the difference between success and failure of a given system.

Each of these factors deserves a thorough treatment of its own, but since we were invited to address this topic at a recent seminar sponsored by SEMI Taiwan, we’ve assembled an overview presentation entitled “Factory Systems Architectures for EDA” that you can use as a starting point. It not only covers in more depth the requirements above which drive key architectural decisions, but also suggests what some of the major architectural components of a production system would need to be, based on the experience Cimetrix has gained working with the earliest adopters of EDA across the semiconductor device maker and equipment supplier communities. These include provisions for handling the scores of equipment metadata models that will exist in a production facility, for creating and managing the thousands of data collection plans that are resident at the equipment instances themselves, for monitoring and maintaining the overall performance of a system with such inherent flexibility, and for a number of other examples. Finally, the presentation describes some high-level examples of architectural “styles” that have been implemented in the industry thus far.  

We sincerely hope you will download this presentation and its companion “The Power of E164: EDA Common Metadata” that was also presented at the SEMI Taiwan event, and contact us when you want to know more about any of these topics.♦

We here at Cimetrix are excited that we are implementing a new process that will both benefit our clients and the environment. We have always delivered our software runtime license orders to our clients on CDs along with hardcopies of their Certificates of Authenticity (COA). Well, starting January 1^st, we will begin delivering orders to our clients through emails that will include a digital COA for each runtime license and instructions on how to download their software.

As a company, we have always prided our self on providing the finest quality customer experience possible so we feel that this new process is just one more step in improving our service. There are a number of benefits of this change:

• Most of our clients integrate Cimetrix’s software with their own software by using the Software Development Kit (SDK), most runtime license CDs are simply thrown away, which in today’s world is really not acceptable. By making this simple change, we will be eliminating thousands of pounds of potential waste.

• We are constantly improving our software products and the latest version should always be obtained from our Support website (cimetrix.com/online-support)—not from a CD stored on a shelf somewhere for who knows how long. This change ensures that the latest version of our software will always be used.

• The shipping cost and time delay by sending CDs by a carrier will be eliminated which will be a direct cost savings to you. 

• The proof-of-purchase for our runtime license is the COA, not the CD. The COA number is what is used to obtain the license code using our online license generator. 

So the only thing we need our clients to do is to make sure we have an email address on file of where they would like their future orders sent. It’s that simple. We do foresee a period of adjustment for some clients, so for those that still want CDs and hardcopy COAs delivered, we will have this option available for an additional fee.

Of course, if you have any questions or comments regarding this policy, we are always happy to hear from you.  You can contact us at Orders@Cimetrix.com.