Intel Backgrounder:

"Copy Exactly" Factory Strategy

Intel introduced its "Copy Exactly" factory strategy in the mid-1980s and completed its adoption in 1996. Intel can credit "Copy Exactly" with enabling the company to bring factories online quickly with high-volume practices already in place; hence, decreasing time to market and increasing yields.

When Intel began implementing the "Copy Exactly" strategy, it saw rapid productivity and financial gains. As the strategy evolved, manufacturing became the heart of Intel's turnaround and growth in the 1990s. Productivity increased many times over. In 1997, VLSI Research estimated that revenues per manufacturing employee increased from $114,000 in 1985 to $461,000 in 1995. Meanwhile, the company's revenue increased by three times during those 10 years, while the number of factory workers decreased by 30 percent.

Rapid Transition from Development to Full Volume Production
"Copy Exactly" solves the problem of getting production facilities up to speed quickly by duplicating everything from the development plant to the volume-manufacturing plant. In particular, it means ensuring that the process devised at the development facility is fine tuned not just for performance and reliability, but for high-volume production as well.

To do that, managers from high-volume facilities participate at the development plant as a new process technology is created. When "Copy Exactly" was first implemented, only equipment and process output parameters were copied exactly to the high-volume plant. During the last decade, Intel has widely expanded the functions that were duplicated in high-volume factories. Now, everything at the development plant - the process flow, equipment set, suppliers, plumbing, manufacturing clean room, and training methodologies - is selected to meet high volume needs, recorded, and then copied exactly to the high-volume plant.

Time after time, factory yields start at higher levels, and even improve when multiple factories come online using "Copy Exactly." It is this "Copy Exactly" strategy that has guided the development of Intel's latest generation performance microprocessors, and which promises to supply consistently high volumes soon after start up.

"Copy Exactly" Creates a Flexible Virtual Fab
The "Copy Exactly" strategy creates great flexibility for Intel's factory network. Because each fab is nearly identical, wafers can be partially completed in one fab and finished in another, yet yield at the same level as if the wafer were built in only one factory. No other semiconductor manufacturer can do this now.

By creating a global virtual fab network, Intel limits impact from natural or man-made disasters. If an event occurs in one part of the world, Intel manufacturing does not come to a halt. The rest of the fab network is able to continue production and continue shipping product to customers.

"Copy Exactly" provides Intel with greater resources than other companies' fabs because each Intel fab can share technical resources worldwide across the virtual factory network. By continuously sharing information, the virtual factory engineering organization can instantaneously implement process adjustments globally; thereby improving product performance and reducing costs in all Intel factories.

"Copy Exactly" Versus Traditional Semiconductor Factory Strategy
In most semiconductor factories, equipment and processes used in research vary greatly from those used in high volume manufacturing. At many companies, each new technology is brought to a technology development facility where a team of engineers precision-tune the process until it is perfected. Then the process is transferred to a high-volume manufacturing facility where a new set of engineers modifies the process so that it can be produced in large quantities.

This conversion to high volume manufacturing not only delays the process ramp up, it results in literally hundreds of differences in the process recipe from one development site to another. These differences basically add up to a different process. This new process often behaves differently, with different sensitivities. Process differences and interactions pertaining specifically to wafer fabrication equipment changes - may have a significant detrimental impact on yield.