Send us your feedback . They're not the multimillion-dollar process tools or the various ultrapure material delivery systems, not even the precious silicon wafers waiting to be turned from sand into microcircuit gold. The most essential components are the men and women who carry out the manufacturing, without whose efforts all that industrial alchemy would be impossible to achieve. Massive capital investment and a host of technological wonders cannot overcome the obstacle of inadequately trained employees.
Many companies take seriously the task of educating their workforce.
I toured last fall. With each successive technological generation, the class is updated and taught again to employees. He has dozens of charts showing the quantitative correlation between proper handling and high yields. As he explains, one scratched or broken wafer can shower particles throughout a group of wafers, sometimes requiring the scrapping of an entire lot. Since employees already have a solid grounding in both the theory and practice of what they're involved in, Mori's pitch on the connection between handling and successful outcomes is effective.