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Startling absences found on VLSI Research's latest '10 Best' lists |
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Jun 13, 2006 at 02:52 PM |
The winners of VLSI Research's annual "10 Best Customer Satisfaction" awards were announced earlier today.
The initial lists showcase the awardees in the process diagnostics equipment category and the large and small (supplier, that is) wafer processing equipment categories. Numero unos in each category are Agilent, Varian SEA, and Nissin Ion Equipment, respectively.
But what about those missing from the listings? The biggest fish absent from school is KLA-Tencor, which failed to crack the diagnostics top 10. Also conspicuous by its absence in that category is Nanometrics, although Accent Optical--which is in the midst of being bought by Nano--does come in a very respectable fifth.
On the wafer processing side, you won't find Nikon, Canon , or Lam among the large-supplier winners, while last year's small-tool numero uno, Tegal, failed to make the list at all this year. Also missing in action from the small-tool awardees are FSI, Semitool, and Mattson--all of which cracked last year's list.
Wouldn't it be great for someone to do a top ten of Customer Dissatisfaction awards, with such rating categories as least supportive (whether it be in terms of process, field engineering, spares, or whatever), take-the-money-and-run after sales, downtime, scrapped throughput, software glitches, and the like?
If you have any nominees for the equipment supplier s- - t list, please post your comments. Even an odd horror story or two from the fab frontlines would be most welcome.
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