Welcome to Volume 22, Number 5 of the FabTime Cycle Time Management Newsletter. We hope this issue finds you all well. In our community news section, we share links to several articles about the current chip shortage and resulting capacity expansion plans. In our subscriber discussion forum, we share some additional resources related to a topic raised in the previous issue: critical ratio values by zone.
In our software tip and our main article this month we address the topic of managing operators during a staffing shortage. We chose this topic after hearing from various fabs that the current economic environment has led to difficulties in finding sufficient operators. In the main article, we identify four fab management issues that may be exacerbated by a lack of operators and discuss ways to mitigate the impact of operator unavailability on cycle time.
Welcome to Volume 22, Number 4 of the FabTime Cycle Time Management Newsletter. In this issue we have an announcement about a promotion for Jean Paul Tu, now Principal Engineer for FabTime and another about the Fab Owners Alliance. We also share a few recent news stories from Jennifer’s LinkedIn feed. Our FabTime software tip of the month is about customizing data tables using our relatively new data table engine, Ag-grid. We also introduce a new subscriber discussion topic about the application of critical ratio dispatching to wafer fabs.
In response to the continuing chip shortage, we’ve seen interest in understanding and improving fab performance from many quarters. In our main article we return to basics, discussing the three fundamental drivers of wafer fab cycle time, with added detail from our cycle time management course. We hope you’ll consider sharing this article with others.
Welcome to Volume 22, Number 3 of the FabTime Cycle Time Management Newsletter. We hope you’re enjoying summer wherever you are and are finding the chip shortage positive for your business’ bottom line. In this issue we have announcements about some FabTime staffing changes and delivery of our cycle time management course, as well as some highlights from industry news that Jennifer has been sharing on LinkedIn. We also have subscriber discussion about lot splitting for 300mm fabs and managing during a supply crunch.
In our main article, we discuss the impact of rework on fab cycle time, a topic that we have not previously addressed in the newsletter. We share a companion software tip on how to estimate the percentage of rework in FabTime.
Welcome to Volume 22, Number 2 of the FabTime Cycle Time Management Newsletter. In this issue we have a few links from Jennifer’s LinkedIn, but no other announcements. Our software tip of the month is about using FabTime to identify possible instances of soft dedication in the fab. We have subscriber discussion about WIP Utilization %, sending SMS email to Japanese cell phones, breaking up maintenance events, managing SPC in a shared fab environment, and paying off technical debt.
Our main article was inspired by the many reports we’ve seen and heard lately of fabs facing capacity and cycle time challenges. We’ve spent 20+ years thinking and teaching about ways to improve cycle time for existing fabs. We’ve always closed our cycle time course with a list of our top ten recommendations. Most of these have been covered in past newsletters, but we thought there would be value in a single article that describes all ten. We hope you find these recommendations useful.
Welcome to Volume 22, Number 1 of the FabTime Cycle Time Management Newsletter. This is the first issue of 2021. In this issue we have an announcement about our new FabTime user interface, a call for papers for the TSIA Joint Symposium, a quick announcement about delivery of sessions of our cycle time management course, and a couple of news links from Jennifer’s LinkedIn.
One of the main topics of our course, downtime, particularly scheduled downtime, is the primary theme of this month’s issue. Our software tip of the month is about using our new Green-to-Green charts (G2G) to identify cases where you might be grouping PMs. In our main article, we discuss why grouping PMs isn’t a good idea for cycle time, and why G2G is a useful metric for monitoring downtime instances. We also have subscriber discussion about dedicating weekends to maintenance events, analyzing failures for time-of-day patterns, and comparing OEE across fabs.
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