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CHRISTOPHER KONARSKI, NEIL PERUFFO & RON WARREN, IBM, Hopewell Junction, NY, USA

ABSTRACT
To succeed in a competitive marketplace, manufacturers are challenged to excel at speed, cost, and reliability, and – in the chip manufacturing business – as each challenge is met, the expectations for speed and cost continue to rise at a significant rate while the pressure to maintain high reliability never lets up. In semiconductors, the need for speed means not only increased clock-speed performance, but also rapid turnaround time (TAT). Rapid TAT means customers can get prototype hardware for evaluation very early in the technology life cycle and their orders can be manufactured and delivered quickly. Days, weeks, even hours can impact our customers’ time to market. Our customers voiced their need for speed, and IBM responded by benchmarking and then implementing and executing a very aggressive raw process time (RPT) reduction programme. The need for focus on this front has always been at the top of our customers’ satisfaction list – and in this article we explain how our RPT reduction programme is achieving turnaround times that are among the shortest in the industry.