Explainer
From sand to shipped chip: the whole journey on one page
Fifteen steps, two factories, one diagram. The route every chip takes from silicon to shipment.
Notes from the build-out.
Short, diagram-led pieces on building, staffing, supplying and qualifying a semiconductor line. What tends to go wrong, and what to do first.
- Explainers
- Wafers, fabs, packages, in labelled diagrams
- Manufacturing
- Ramps, hook-up, yield, equipment effectiveness
- Talent
- Collars, gowning, skills matrices
- Supply chain
- Utilities and what to localise first
How chips are made, in diagramsWafer, chip, fab, package, and fab vs OSAT vs ATMP.
Eight industry challengesThe industry’s bin map, with symptoms, causes and answers.
01 All insights
Fourteen places to start.
Explainer
Inside a fab: the floors that make a cleanroom work
Air handling above, the cleanroom in the middle, the sub-fab below. A fab in labelled cross-section.
Manufacturing
Wafer sort and bin maps: how a fab reads its own yield
Every die is tested before the wafer leaves the fab. The pattern of failures tells you where to look.
Talent
Cleanroom gowning: the routine every new operator learns first
Eight steps, top to bottom, every single time. The first habit a cleanroom operator builds.
Manufacturing
From crate to first wafer: tool move-in and hook-up, step by step
Nine steps between a crated tool and a released one, and the four parties who own them.
Manufacturing
The yield funnel: where good dies are lost between start and shipment
Six gates between a wafer start and a shipped part, and a six-step loop to stop losing at the same gate twice.
Supply chain
What a fab consumes: water, power, gases and chemicals
Five inputs every hour, four outputs to treat. The utilities behind every wafer start.
Explainer
Wire bond or flip-chip? Package types in two cross-sections
Two ways to connect a die to the world, drawn side by side, with what each demands of the line.
Operations
OEE in a fab or OSAT: the six losses, explained
Availability, performance, quality: three numbers, six losses, one view of what a tool really delivers.
Talent
The skills matrix: the one chart a plant head should read every week
Headcount hides risk. Certified people per tool per shift shows it.
Manufacturing
Five readiness gaps that delay a new fab ramp
Ramps slip on readiness more than on technology. Five gaps to close before tool-in.
Talent
White, grey, blue: why a fab needs three talent pipelines, not one
Engineers, technicians and operators are three labour markets. Plan them together, source them separately.
Supply chain
What to localise first: a supply-chain order of attack for a new fab or OSAT
Localise in order of risk to the process. Four rungs, lowest risk first.
Explainer
OSAT, ATMP and advanced packaging: a plain-language guide
Same work, two business models, and a family of newer techniques. Untangled.
Next step
What is your next semiconductor challenge?
Tell us what you are solving. We will tell you plainly whether we can help, and who would deliver it.