FabTime Cycle Time Management Newsletter Reaches 2000 Semiconductor Industry Subscribers


San Jose, CA | March 8th, 2006

FabTime Inc. today announced that its cycle time management newsletter had received its two thousandth subscriber. The newsletter is a monthly email forum for introducing and discussing best practices in wafer fab cycle time management. It contains articles about how various factors (product mixhot lots, setups) affect fab cycle time, as well as the introduction of cycle time-related metrics. Each issue also includes a subscriber discussion forum, in which readers raise and address topics related to fab cycle time and performance improvement. Recent subscriber discussion topics have included the relationship between staffing levels and utilization, M-Ratio (a metric for tracking the ratio of scheduled to unscheduled maintenance), and the causes of declining moves in a wafer fab.

Recent newsletter topics have included:

  • Operator Variability and Cycle Time
  • Running Development Lots in a Production Fab
  • Operational Recommendations for Wafer Fab Cycle Time Improvement
  • Setup Avoidance and Dispatching
  • Cycle Time and Holds

The newsletter is now in its seventh year of publication. More than 400 companies and universities are represented in the newsletter subscriber list. The companies with the most subscribers are Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), Analog Devices (NYSE:ADI), Infineon Technologies (NYSE: IFX), Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL), Atmel (NASDAQ: ATML), Micron Technology (NYSE: MU), STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), Philips (NYSE: PHG), and TECH Semiconductor.

A newsletter subscription form is available on our site. There is no charge to subscribe for the current issue of the newsletter each month. Past issues are currently only available to customers of FabTime’s web-based digital dashboard software or our cycle time management course.