Fabrizio Ruo Redda, R&D Senior Manager, Vishay Semiconductor Italiana

Semiconductor devices development requires an extensive work of testing and data analysis. Electrical characterization laboratory provides a large amount of data to development engineers, coming every time in different formats according to specific products under test.

Usually development engineers spend a lot of time putting together the data, while a limited fraction of time is dedicated to value added activities like analyzing statistically the data and drawing sounding conclusions.

In the frame of a lean six sigma project, it was possible to show the economic advantage achievable by eliminating the tedious data preparation or better “data moving” process.

JMP scripting capability is used to manage complex data files from different testers so that they can be easily uploaded in a SQL database.

Development engineers can now use JMP to download data directly from SQL in a format ready for analysis.

The typical engineering analysis time has been reduced by more than 85%, but more important, it is now only dedicated to value added analysis without any intellectual waste. Furthermore, the quality of the analysis and conclusion is now improved, considering also the possibility to make quick comparison among products or with previously collected data.