Local Release Management
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Johor, Malaysia
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Front-End, Back-End, Module-house Semiconductor

Duality Principle Role:
• Enterprise Architecture Planning
• Collaboration Facilitation
• Vendor Management
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Solution Architecture
• Systems Engineering
• Software Engineering

Background: A New Manufacturing division of a global company needs to be included in the parent company’s MES software release cycle and supported when doing initial MES software deployment with minimum local staff available.

Business Challenge: A new Malaysian subsidiary of Qimonda, operating state-of-the-art production lines, needed to have the globally running ‘Manufacturing Execution Systems’ software initially deployed. New minor enhancements needed to be included in the final release to support local business demands generated by the new role of the subsidiary in the parents organization. The client had the need to be able to deploy the global MES software to its local systems with minimum local staff available. Most of the development and testing resources including the testing environments are only globally available and need to be assigned to a local project.

Overview of tasks to accomplish:
• Record local business demands. Align scope within global organization.
• Align global release schedule with local business goals and schedule.
• Create project with global resources to support local subsidiary.
• Train Global Release Management Process to local resources. Install Local Release Manager.
• Execute off-site development and testing.
• Define, budget and provide target hardware platform.
• Define an overall deployment strategy for target site.
• Deploy the manufacturing systems to the target site..

The introduction of Release Management principles needs the buy-in of all involved parties, especially the business customers and senior management. Priorities, schedules and local budgets have to derived from the business goals and aligned with all stakeholders involved. Defining and establishing this communication process is one of the biggest challenges of Release Management. We also had to overcome the cultural differences existing at the new site.

In this case no local development or testing resources were been available. Most of the Software Development Life Cycle had to be implemented off-site and the ready product then being deployed to the originating site. The local resources were needed support in deploying the final product and tracking issues.

The hardware requirements had to be calculated from the planned performance of the new site.

Duality Principle Solution: Before starting on the technical implementation we had to ensure that the subsidiary knows and understands the Global Release Management process as defined and lived by the parent company. The process gave the subsidiary a platform to announce its local business needs and to get integrated into the Global Release master schedule. Several meetings and training sessions have been performed to transfer the guidelines to the target site. With our help one individual has been identified as Local Release Manager inside the local organization to supervise and drive the local activities.

After analyzing and reviewing the current status we implemented the following activities:
• Trained the Global Release Process to the Local Release Manager and the local Business stakeholders
• Created local visibility for global activities by including the site into the regular Change Control Board Meeting and Status Meetings
• Derived Project from aligned Business Demands and aligned schedule with local technology roadmap
• Regularly assigned and reviewed Team assignments with Project Management.
• Helped executing the off-site project including regression tests on target system configuration. Assigned and allocated Hardware resources.
• Established local Issue Tracking system and helped escalate prioritized resolution.
• Ensured deployment strategy is feasible for local Organization and executed deployment rehearsal off-site.
• Calculated hardware requirements and procured systems.
• Coached actual deployment to production on site and fixed installation issues.

To introduce and live an established Release Management process in a big organization is an ongoing challenge. An important fact is to involve people from the beginning, review the process constantly after feedback and create positive and realistic expectations for the IT organization and the business units.

The local organizations Release Management Process is now seamlessly integrated within the parents organization. This ensures timely addressing of upcoming business requirements and global support in having the changes implemented and deployed to their site with minimum local staff required.

Results: As a result, the new site is now having the company’s MES Software installed and is running in sync with the global release roadmap. Because the business demands are now also aligned throughout the entire organization, changes and enhancements to the software solution are introduced in less time and more efficiently with less effort. Our Client can now react more quickly to necessary changes in its business process, what proves vital for its fast paced business.

The established release roadmap including scope announces a timetable for the business organization for when they can expect some functionality. It creates a routine across all teams with which they can align and gives more confidence that business demands will be delivered in higher quality.

A process proves its strength if it can be dubbed and lived within geographically dispersed teams. It can then generate similarity effects leading to higher efficiency and alignment throughout the entire organization. Further more also small subsidiaries can now access the knowledge base, experience and resources of the parent organization.

It has been proven that an IT system can be copy-‘n’-pasted to new installations if the business processes are also in sync. The resulting deployment process took one week to get a new MES for a new fab up and running.

Enterprise Architecture Planning
Client:  Company Confidential
Location:  Austin, Texas
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Enabling Collaboration
Client:  Company Confidential
Location:  Austin, Texas
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Requirements Management
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Sunnyvale, California
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Data Stratification
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Sunnyvale, California
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Solutions Architecture
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Richmond, Virginia
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Data Stratification
Client:  Infineon
Location:  Richmond, Virginia
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Data Stratification
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Porto, Portugal
Industry: Manufacturing – Semiconductor Back-End

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Enterprise Architecture
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Dresden, Germany
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Client Framework
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Aizu-Wakamastsu, Japan
Industry: Manufacturing - 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

Duality Principle Role:
• Enterprise Architecture Planning
• Collaboration Facilitation
• Vendor Management
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Solution Architecture
• Systems Engineering
• Software Engineering

Background: A major Semiconductor manufacturing Company in Japan with frequent master data changes introduces a client framework application to eliminate offline data loaders and improve data integrity

Business Challenge: The manufacturing plant of Spansion Japan, a subsidiary of Spansion USA, operating a state-of-the-art production line, needed to have a client framework implemented to provide a single point of data management platform. The framework should utilize SOA principles and seamlessly integrate into the clients existing windows cluster infrastructure, and provide a base building block for future technology development activities. It should make use of standard components and be easily maintainable, installable and extendable. The framework should provide design, code and development documentation.

Duality Principle Solution: We reviewed the existing data storage systems and update interfaces to create a state-of-the-art application architecture integrated into the clients IT landscape. The application ownership and maintenance should later be completely transferred to our client.

We implemented a Service Oriented Architecture in our framework to abstract from the data storage details in the existing persistent layer and encapsulate the business logic inside the services. The client application utilizes ‘Smart Client’ capabilities to enrich the user interface experience, incorporate proven practices and patterns and present data from several back-end systems on one single platform. The consumed services are hosted on the clients existing cluster platform and provided through communication foundation contracts. Depending on the required scaling, number of connecting clients and communicating back-end servers the underlying communication protocol can be adjusted transparently. Inside the client application we implemented several data management modules consisting of data elements representing the underlying data objects abstracted to the business Use Case driving each of them. We leveraged sophisticated client-side data validation algorithms have been implemented together with a dependency analysis to provide immediate feedback to the entering engineering personnel. Existing data structures have been consistently visualized using the ‘Smart Client’ features available in the application. To have all of the master data changes securely approved by the appropriate roles we implemented an approval state model tight into the existing directory services providing user authentication, authorization and role assignment.

During the entire development process we ensured a constant feedback loop from the testers, our client and the local IT organization by implementing the rapid SCRUM development methodology.

Result: After the end of the project, the client is recognizing dramatic improvements in the quality of their master data. All changes routed through a configurable change management process that ensures all change history is available and transparent. For standard tasks no inside knowledge of existing data structures is required anymore and the human error factor potential is greatly reduced. In addition, batch jobs can be executed faster while still continuing to ensure the overall data integrity.

Due to the modular application architecture and the use of existing standardized and proven frameworks, application maintenance and extendibility is now easily executed by our client. Future changes in the clients’ data model do not require a new rollout of the client applications, only the service layer needs to be updated. due to the frameworks scaleable design, future functionality can be easily added to existing clients and deployed transparently.

Global Release Management
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Dresden, Germany
Industry: Manufacturing – 300mm Front-End, Back-End, Module-house Semiconductor

Duality Principle Role:
• Enterprise Architecture Planning
• Collaboration Facilitation
• Vendor Management
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Solution Architecture
• Systems Engineering
• Software Engineering

Background: A global manufacturing company with several concurrent local MES software projects introduces globally aligned release management principles to ensure higher quality of delivered software in less time and aligned business demands across the organization

Business Challenge: Qimonda Dresden, operating state-of-the-art production lines, needed to have its many concurrent software development streams for the Manufacturing Execution System globally managed and aligned to reduce costs, deliver in less time and increase quality of the delivered software products. It was critical to deploy the software in alignment with the clients technology roadmap.

Overview of tasks to accomplish:
• Create and agree on global release roadmap with all sites schedule.
• Define and agree scope of release phases with all sites scope.
• Develop a global SDLC process across all sites.
• Derive local projects and assign the team and hardware resources.
• Ensure high quality documentation and testing quality.
• Define deployment strategy into no-downtime 24/7 environment impact.

The Introduction of global release management principles needs the buy-in of all involved parties, especially the business customers and senior management. Priorities, schedules and local budgets have to derived from the business goals and aligned with all stakeholders involved. Defining and establishing this communication process is one of the biggest challenges of implementing an inclusive global release management process.

Duality Principle Solution: Before starting to recommend and execute changes we had to understand the current state of the release management processes and capabilities. We began with a number of walk-through sessions with key individuals across the organization. Next we assessed the state of currently running projects, available testing/development hardware and available team resources. We met with the company’s stakeholders to retrieve business visions and pending change requests. The "as-is" analysis showed a misalignment between the business units, an inconsistent release management process on different sites and poor people buy-in and motivation along with insufficient testing practices and too many ad hoc changes.

After analyzing the gathered information we proposed, drove and executed the following measures:
• Aligned, created and communicated Global Release Roadmap schedule across the MES organization. Defined phases to be implemented as projects.
• Introduced and owned Change Control Board together with business organization to prioritize, track and align change requests to defined project scopes. Defined and expedited "Fast Track Path" for hot fixes after reevaluating benefits and efforts.
• Implemented complete Software Development Life Cycle for all MES projects across the organization including tooling, documentation, reporting, feedback and continuous improvement processes.
• Trained new documented process to replicate to spread the changes to all sites.
• Defined the source control management system configuration and branch assignment to concurrent projects with designers, developers and testers.
• Regularly assigned and reviewed the team assignments with the program office.
• Took system ownership for all of the testing and staging environments. Scheduled utilization and project assignment. Kept systems up-to-date and planned introduction of new systems and refreshes, so defining the release infrastructure early.
• Established the common issue tracking system and the escalated prioritized resolution process.
• Collaborated with the technical lead and project manager to review the project activities after every SDLC phase to ensure correctness, quality, progress and completeness of documentation and deliverables.
• Supervised different phases of testing as unit tests, regressions test, smoke tests and evaluated test automation to reduce test effort and increase repeatability and quality of test results.
• Ensured the deployment strategy is already part of design phase to allow no-downtime installation to 24/7 highly available production environment. Planned and executed deployment to test hardware and to production systems. Performed rehearsals and deployment tests to optimize installation process and train required resources.

To introduce and live an established release management process in a complex organization is an ongoing challenge. An important fact is to involve people from the beginning, review the process constantly after feedback and create positive and realistic expectations for the IT organization and the business units.

Results: As a result, the client is recognizing dramatic improvements in the quality of the delivered MES software. Because the business demands are now also aligned throughout the entire organization, changes and enhancements to the software solution are introduced in less time and more efficiently with less effort. Our client can now react more quickly to necessary changes in its business process, what proves vital for its fast paced business. Our newly established release cycle meant that a release had to be regression, performance and integration tested to be able to release it into production. We could integrate the different types of testing by having separate environments for each type. The established release roadmap including scope announces a timetable for the business organization for when they can expect some functionality. It creates a routine across all teams with which they can align and gives more confidence that business demands will be delivered in higher quality.

Local Release Management
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Suzhou, China
Industry: Manufacturing – 300mm Front-End, Back-End, Module-house Semiconductor

Duality Principle Role:
• Enterprise Architecture Planning
• Collaboration Facilitation
• Vendor Management
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Solution Architecture
• Systems Engineering
• Software Engineering

Background: A manufacturing site in Suzhou, China needs to be included in parent company’s MES software release cycle and supported when doing software upgrades and deployments with a minimum local staff allocation.

Business Challenge: The Chinese subsidiary of Qimonda, a large globally acting manufacturing Company, operating state-of-the-art production lines, needed to have its local business demands integrated into the global release roadmap. Deploy the new MES Software versions to its local systems with minimum local staff available. Most of the development and testing resources including the testing environments are only globally available and need to be assigned to a local project.

Overview of tasks to accomplish:
• Record local business demands. Align scope within global organization.
• Align global release schedule with local business goals.
• Create project with global resources to support local subsidiary.
• Train Global Release Management Process to local resources. Install Local Release Manager.
• Execute off-site Development and Testing.
• Define Deployment Strategy for Target Site.
• Deploy to Target Site.

The Introduction of the release management principles needs the buy-in of all involved parties, especially the business customers and senior management. Priorities, schedules and local budgets have to derived from the business goals and aligned with all stakeholders involved. Defining and establishing this communication process is one of the biggest challenges of Release Management initiative. We also had to overcome the cultural differences existing at that site. In this case no local development or testing resources have been available. Most of the Software Development Life Cycle had to be implemented off-site and the ready product then being deployed to the originating site.

The local resources needed support in deploying the final product and tracking issues.

Duality Principle Solution: Before starting on the technical implementation we had to ensure that the subsidiary knows and understands the Global Release Management process as defined and lived by the parent company. The process gave the subsidiary a platform to announce its local business needs and to get integrated into the global release schedule. Several collaboration and training sessions and have been performed to transfer the guidelines to the target site. With our help one individual has been identified as the local release manager inside the local organization to supervise and drive the local activities.

After analyzing and reviewing the current status we implemented the following activities:
• Trained the Global Release Process to the Local Release Manager and the local Business stakeholders
• Created local visibility for global activities by including the site into the regular Change Control Board Meeting and Status Meetings
• Derived Project from aligned Business Demands and aligned schedule with local technology roadmap
• Regularly assigned and reviewed Team assignments with Project Management.
• Helped executing the off-site project including regression tests on target system configuration. Assigned and allocated Hardware resources.
• Established local Issue Tracking system and helped escalate prioritized resolution.
• Ensured deployment strategy is feasible for local Organization and executed deployment rehearsal off-site.
• Coached actual deployment to production on site and fixed installation issues.

To introduce and live an established release management process in a big organization is an ongoing challenge. An important fact is to involve people from the beginning, review the process constantly after feedback and create positive and realistic expectations for the IT organization and the business units. The local organizations release management process is now seamlessly integrated within the parents organization. This ensures timely addressing of upcoming business requirements and global support in having the changes implemented and deployed to their site with minimum local staff required.

Results: As a result, the client is recognizing drastic improvements in the quality of the delivered MES software. Because the business demands are now also aligned throughout the entire organization, changes and enhancements to the software solution are introduced in less time and more efficiently with less effort. Our client can now react more quickly to necessary changes in its business process, what proves vital for its fast paced business. Our newly established release cycle meant that a release had to be regression, performance and integration tested to be able to release it into production. We could integrate the different types of testing by having separate environments for each type. The established a release roadmap including scope announces a timetable for the business organization for when they can expect some functionality. It creates a routine across all teams with which they can align and gives more confidence that business demands will be delivered in higher quality.

A process proves its strength if it can be dubbed and lived within geographically dispersed teams. It can then generate similarity effects leading to higher efficiency and alignment throughout the entire organization. Furthermore also small subsidiaries can now access the knowledge base, experience and resources of the parent organization.

Requirements Engineering
Client:  Customer Confidential
Location:  Austin, Texas
Industry: Manufacturing - 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

Duality Principle Role:
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Requirements Engineering

Business Challenge: Our client is a provider of a requirements management solutions that are extensively used within their government customer engagements.  Our client’s requirements product suite was selected by a manufacturing company to document the overall requirements for their manufacturing systems to provide better overall release planning and greater systems transparency.  Our client needed to engage an architect with both extensive understanding the requirements management process and solutions as well as wide-ranging domain knowledge of manufacturing systems.
 
Duality Principle Solution: Within our manufacturing services, we have significant application domain knowledge of manufacturing systems and multiple consultants with manufacturing subject matter expertise.  In order to exceed the expectations of our client, we engaged a consultant that not only had the detailed understanding of manufacturing systems requirements, but additionally possessed comprehensive knowledge of requirements management solutions.
 
Results: We were able to help drive the overall requirements engineering process, provide input as to how to best model the requirements, and provided an example SRS (software requirements specification) document that was leveraged as the standard customer template.  As a result, our client was able to successfully extend their solution to better meet the expanding customer needs.

Local Release Management
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Richmond, Virginia
Industry: Manufacturing – 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

Duality Principle Role:
• Enterprise Architecture Planning
• Collaboration Facilitation
• Vendor Management
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise

Background: Manufacturing Company in Richmond, VA, USA is included in Parent Company’s MES Software Release Cycle and aligns Business Demands with all other sites.

Business Challenge: A US Subsidiary of Qimonda AG, a globally acting manufacturing Company, ramping up a state-of-the-art production line, needed to have its local business demands integrated into the global release roadmap.

The defined global Software Development Life Cycle Process needed to be deployed and implemented at this site.
Overview of tasks to accomplish:
• Record local business demands. Align scope within global organization.
• Align global release schedule with local business goals.
• Train Global Release Management Process to local resources.
• Establish communication path with Parent Company.
• Actively take role as Local Release Manager for one Software Development Life Cycle.
• Pass responsibility of Release Manager to local resource.

The introduction of release management principles need the buy-in of all involved parties, especially the business customers and senior management. Priorities, schedules and local budgets have to be derived from the business goals and aligned with all stakeholders involved. Defining and establishing this communication process is one of the biggest challenges of release management. We also had to overcome the cultural differences existing between the sites.

Duality Principle Solution: Before starting on the process deployment we had to ensure that the subsidiary knows, understands and accepts the global release management process as defined and lived by the parent company. Together with the global release management we established a message platform to host all reference material. We presented the process to the local business and IT senior management, took their feedback and addressed proposed changes back to the global board. The agreed process gave the subsidiary a platform to announce its local business needs and to get integrated into the Global Release Schedule. Several information and training sessions have been performed to transfer the process to the target site. We took the role as local release manager inside the local organization to supervise and drive the local activities.

We implemented the following activities:
• Aligned the Global Release Management Process with the local Business and IT stakeholders
• Published and trained the Release Management Process to all locally involved employees
• Created local visibility for global activities by including the site into the regular Change Control Board Meeting and Status Meetings
• Established local Issue Tracking system and helped escalate prioritized resolution.
• Implemented one complete SDLC inside a local Project as Local Release Manager.
• Coached actual deployment to production on site and fixed installation issues.

To introduce and live an established release management process in a big organization is an ongoing challenge. An important fact is to involve people from the beginning, review the process constantly after feedback and create positive and realistic expectations for the IT organization and the business units. The local organizations release management process is now seamlessly integrated within the parents organization. This ensures timely addressing of upcoming business requirements and global support in having the changes implemented and deployed to their site.

Results:
As a result, the client is recognizing drastic improvements in the quality of the delivered MES software. Because the business demands are now also aligned throughout the entire organization, changes and enhancements to the software solution are introduced in less time and more efficiently with less effort. Our client can now react more quickly to necessary changes in its business process, what proves vital for its fast paced business. Our newly established release cycle meant that a release had to be regression, performance and integration tested to be able to release it into production. We could integrate the different types of testing by having separate environments for each type. The established Release Roadmap including scope announces a timetable for the business organization for when they can expect some functionality. It creates a routine across all teams with which they can align and gives more confidence that business demands will be delivered in higher quality.

A process proves its strength if it can be dubbed and lived within geographically dispersed teams. It can then generate similarity effects leading to higher efficiency and alignment throughout the entire organization. Furthermore also small subsidiaries can now access the knowledge base, experience and resources of the parent organization.

Enterprise Architecture Workshops
Client:  Customer Confidential
Location:  Burghausen, Germany
Industry: Manufacturing – Semiconductor Fabrication

Duality Principle Role:
• Enterprise Architecture Planning
• Collaboration Facilitation
• Vendor Management
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise

Business Challenge: Our client is a global leader of silicon wafer manufacturing with manufacturing facilities distributed throughout the world.  Upon the successful completion of the Enterprise Architecture Planning engagement, our client requested additional guidance and facilitation of workshops in order to initiate the communication and rollout of a few key strategic initiatives.  Each of the initiatives involved senior business and IT resources from each of their locations as well as vendor account executives.  The primary objective of the strategic initiative rollout was to communicate, align the ownership and authority, and ensure buy-in for each of the proposed projects.  The additional challenge was based on the simple fact that, just in the manufacturing systems solutions space, our client had over a dozen vendors, each of which were pushing for the extension of their solutions.

Duality Principle Solution: While we understand that it is essential for any business to plan the correct strategy, correct execution of the strategy is essential to realizing the business vision and enabling the success of the strategy.  In order to promote execution (strategy implementation) success, the first step was to ensure accurate communication and gain acceptance of the key contributors, both internal and external team members.  Understanding the culture within the company and motivation of the internal and external leads was essential to ensure the success of the initiation activities.  Based on the corporate culture and identified strengths of the individual leads, the most effective way to ensure acceptance and transfer the execution ownership was to host a serious of collaborative meetings.
 
Result: Our consultants designed a series of meetings, face-to-face discussions, break-out sessions and team review.  Our team facilitated the discussions to enforce effective meeting methodologies and the most efficient use of limited time and travel budgets. The focused sessions resulted in global alignment of the initiatives and the appropriate transfer of ownership to each of the execution leads.

System Characterization and Optimization
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Aizu-Wakamastsu, Japan
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

Duality Principle Role:
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Systems Engineering

Business Challenge: A main component of the 300mm factory system had unreasonable transaction durations, which was resulting in reliability issues. This particular application is responsible for the scheduling and dispatching of activities in the production line, through the implementation of complex algorithms.

Duality Principle Solution: Within our operational efficiency services, we have significant system characterization and optimization experience. As the transaction latency issue was a critical path item for the factory ramp, we leveraged our manufacturing services and engaged a consultant that has expertise and experience within the advanced scheduling and dispatching domain. The consulted used the Operational Efficiency pattern, which is extended from the Lean Six Sigma process. Using the DMAIC process (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), the consultant was able to rapidly identify areas of opportunity. As with all of our engagements, we let the data drive the decisions.

Results: Duality Principle was able to provide the System Characterization and Optimization recommendation report within days of receiving the request for work. The report included the current system statistics, a list of recommendations by priority (short, mid, long-term goals), and most importantly the implemented and tested solution to the top 4 issues. Using the production test environment, our consultants made the necessary modifications to the application environment as well as the complex manufacturing algorithms. The algorithm execution time was reduced by 70%. The overall benefit to the business was a large reduction in operator head count and a significant savings on necessary hardware.

Optimized SDLC
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Austin, Texas
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Framework Centric Approach to Factory Automation
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Richmond, Virginia
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Manufacturing Operation Solution
Client:  Company Confidential
Location:  Korea
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Engineering User Interface
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Aizu-Wakamastsu, Japan
Industry: Manufacturing - 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

Duality Principle Role:
• Enterprise Architecture Planning
• Collaboration Facilitation
• Vendor Management
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Solution Architecture
• Systems Engineering
• Software Engineering

Background: A manufacturing Company in Japan with frequent master data changes reduces data entry errors and improves data integrity by introducing single-point data entry interface.

Business Challenge: Spansion Japan, a large manufacturing Company operating a production line, needed to have its master data entry error level reduced. Part of the daily routine for different levels of engineers is the management of master data to support a 24/7 running production facility on time. Offline (excel based) loaders existed for all kind of tasks in several also outdated versions. Only very basic data validation has been implemented and no dependencies are resolved. Process and product engineers have modified the loaders and are out-of-sync with also ongoing Master Data Management System and overall system enhancements. Only minimum data validations existed on server side only. Depending on the experience of the engineer the integrity of the data quality fluctuates and is inconsistent across the organization. Also, there was not an approval process existed to review and sign-off proposed changes. Wrong master data can lead to yield loss or production material scrap impacting the cost position of this company.

Duality Principle Solution: The importance of data integrity cannot be overstated. Before starting to work on the implementation we had to analyze the current master data model to retrieve all current data objects and their dependencies. Because not all data objects are manually updated we analyzed all data entry use cases existing in the engineering community together with the existing offline loaders. We then derived data maintenance scenarios to be implemented as modules inside the Master Data Management System. Secondly we reviewed the existing data storage systems and update interfaces to create a state-of-the-art application architecture integrated into the clients IT landscape. The application ownership and maintenance should later be completely transferred to our client. To design a master data change approval model, we had to leverage the existing roles and responsibilities inside the clients organization. Inside the client application we implemented several data management modules consisting of data elements representing the underlying data objects abstracted to the business Use Case driving them. Sophisticated client-side data validation algorithms have been implemented together with a dependency analysis to provide immediate feedback to the entering engineering personnel. For mass updates we provided a batch update interface to automate repetitive tasks driven by reoccurring events inside the clients production flow.

To find and modify data sophisticated search algorithms have been provided to not only find top level elements but also depending data objects easily. To have all master data changes securely approved by the appropriate roles, we implemented an approval state model tight into the existing directory services providing user authentication and authorization. The engineering community involved is now enabled to change and review master data changes consistently while ensuring data integrity across the entire master data management system.

Results: After the end of the project, the client is recognizing dramatic improvements in the quality of its master data. All changes are approved and change history is available. For standard tasks, there is not any inside knowledge of existing data structures that required anymore and human error is excluded. Batch Jobs can be executed faster and in a safe manner. This consequently led to higher process safety in the production fab, reducing costs driven by late changes or wrong data.

Operational Transparency “Dashboard”
Client:  Customer Confidential
Location:  Austin, Texas
Industry: Manufacturing – 300mm Semiconductor Manufacturing

Duality Principle Role:
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Requirements Engineering
• Solution Architecture
• Systems Engineering
• Software Engineering

Background: Manufacturing company with high data volume improves data quality and visualization to make everyday decisions

Business Challenge: A large manufacturing company, needed to have their online data aggregated and visualized to enable them the required transparency in order to make everyday decisions and control their production flow effectively. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to collect included statistical data derived from measurements, production flow data, inventory levels, machine states and experiment results. The data should be made available to different levels of owners within a centralized application based on their view of the data.

Duality Principle Solution: Before stepping in and working on the application design we had to ensure two essentials things as prerequisites:
1. The master data collected and evaluated is correct and up-to-date. We worked with the client to analyze its data flow and storage and executed an as-is investigation to retrieve the current data conversions and aggregations already in place. We created a data model as foundation for further improvements.
2. The driving business case behind every KPI reported is understood and contributes toward the business goal of more efficient production control. We assessed the business needs with the stakeholders to make them and us understand what is needed, what is the goal behind and how we can we improve the data evaluation and decision making process.

Taken the results from the data analysis we recommended more efficient data structures and reduced the amount of data to store by retrieving and calculating meta data from already existing data sources. Data from standardized and customized reports have then been visualized in a web based Dashboard Application to meet the business Use Cases and perspectives. All stakeholders involved are now enabled to spot problem configurations and states in almost real-time and take countermeasures if required. Beyond that the client is also able to optimize its production flow by easily identifying improvement potential from a centralized application.

Results: As a result, the client is recognizing overall improvements in the production control process. Data is available in higher quality, aggregated to a level they can spot irregularities at a time when steering is still painless. Statistical Data and Manufacturing Performance Indicators are available to all levels of personnel in almost real-time.

Offshore Development
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Porto, Portugal
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Onsite Development Services
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Aizuwakamatsu, Japan
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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MES Migration Planning
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Sunnyvale, California
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Enabling Full Factory Automation
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Richmond, Virginia
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Equipment Integration
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Richmond, Virginia
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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MES Migration
Client:  Infineon
Location:  Porto, Portugal
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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MES Technical Lead
Client:  Infineon Technologies
Location:  Villach, Austria
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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MES Solution Design
Client:  Infineon Technologies
Location:  Villach, Austria
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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MES Migration Planning
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Dresden, Germany
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Master Data Management
Client:  Infineon
Location:  Regensburg, Germany
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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Enabling Full Automation
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Aizu-Wakamastsu, Japan
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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MES Evaluation
Client:  Company Confidential
Location:  SuZhu, Taiwan
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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MES Pre-Sales
Client:  Company Confidential
Location:  SuZhu, Taiwan
Industry: Manufacturing: 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

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MES Implementation
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Suzhou, China
Industry: Manufacturing: Semiconductor Back-End

Duality Principle Role:
• Requirements Engineering
• Business Process Analysis
• Systems Integration (all manufacturing systems)
• Local site optimization of MES based on business initiatives
• Customer Acceptance Testing
• Release Management (local and global)

Background: A manufacturing company in Suzhou (China), significantly reduces costs and increases ramp up speed while using multi-site rollout approach for new MES implementation

Business Challenge: The new Chinese subsidiary of Qimonda AG, operating complex production lines, needed to have a new Manufacturing Execution System installed along with its backend facility production ramp. Implementations and rollouts of full-scope Manufacturing Execution Systems in semiconductor production facilities are comprehensive and challenging projects – both with regard to IT requirements and organizational demands. The goals were to reduce implementation times and costs by evaluating existing MES solutions on other sites of Qimonda and possibly enable the corporate global harmonization initiatives. Some of the primary challenges that were faced with the implementation were (but not limited to):
• Overcoming the cultural differences with the local site team.
• Mentoring and training the local team on manufacturing systems and manufacturing principles.
• Overcoming the lack of local resource availability.
• Incorporation of an off-site SLDC process.

Duality Principle Solution: Before starting on the technical implementation and analysis we had to establish a communication process with the resources onsite. The process gave the subsidiary a platform to announce its local business needs and to get integrated into the Global Change Management. Several meetings and training sessions have been performed to transfer the process to the target site. With our help one individual has been identified as Local Release Manager inside the local organization to supervise and drive the local activities. We analyzed the existing back end sites, recorded lessons learnt and deployment issues existing in the past and at present. We found that the installed MES versions are off the main branch, difficult to maintain and to upgrade. Certain blocking points and legacy applications prevented a full update. Despite the faced difficulties we decided to implement the multi-site rollout approach: Take the currently existing MES Solution, adapt it to the local requirements and roll it out.

After analyzing and reviewing the current status we implemented the following activities:
• Created local visibility for global activities by including the site into the regular Change Control Board meeting and status meetings
• Derived corrective actions from issues existing at existing backend facility, solved blocking points and designed target solution
• Derived project from aligned business demands and integrated local requirements
• Project Management and optimization of the overall project plan incorporating the changes through the defined change management process.
• Helped executing the offsite project including regression tests on target system configuration. Assigned and allocated hardware resources.
• Established local issue tracking system and helped escalate prioritized resolution.
• Ensured the deployment strategy is feasible for local organization and executed deployment rehearsal offsite.
• Coaching of the actual deployment steps to enable a seamless production integration.

The target facility is now running with the same MES as the other backend sites. We successfully replaced legacy applications and synchronized the MES to the latest version of the companies' main deployment branch. We executed the deployment to the new fab and trained local resources to own the new system. For future enhancements the subsidiary is included in the backend clusters communication and release management process to ensure local business demands are addressed and aligned properly and in time.

The Results: Our consultant enabled the client to run the current MES versions along with the other cluster fabs. Because the business demands are now also aligned throughout the entire organization, changes and enhancements to the software solution are introduced in less time and more efficiently with less effort. Our Client can now react more quickly to necessary changes in its business process, what proves vital for its fast paced business. A process proves its strength if it can be dubbed and lived within geographically dispersed teams. It can then generate similarity effects leading to higher efficiency and alignment throughout the entire organization. Further more also small subsidiaries can now access the knowledge base, experience and resources of the parent organization while running the same Manufacturing Execution System Software.

Manufacturing Systems Implementation
Client:  Qimonda
Location:  Johor, Malaysia
Industry: Manufacturing: Semiconductor Back-End

Duality Principle Role:
• Alignment of business demands
• Analysis of existing backend sites and manufacturing solutions
• Definition of target MES
• Analysis of existing resources on target site
• Implementation of local enhancements
• Create project with global resources to support local subsidiary in MES Rollout
• Execution of onsite testing
• Deployment to target site

Background: A manufacturing company in Johor (Malaysia), significantly reduces costs and ramp up speed while using multi-site rollout approach for new manufacturing systems implementation

Business Challenge: The new malaysian subsidiary of Qimonda AG, operating complex production lines, needed to have a new Manufacturing Execution System installed along with its backend production ramp. Implementations and rollouts of full-scope Manufacturing Execution Systems in semiconductor production facilities are comprehensive and challenging projects – both with regard to IT requirements and organizational demands. The goals were to reduce implementation times and costs by evaluating existing MES on other sites of Qimonda and possibly applying a global rollout principle. We also had to overcome the cultural differences existing at that site. No local development or testing resources have been available. Most of the Software Development Life Cycle had to be implemented offsite and the ready product then being deployed to the target site. The local resources needed support in deploying the final product and tracking issues.

Duality Principle Solution: Before starting on the technical implementation and analysis we had to establish a communication process with the resources onsite. The process gave the subsidiary a platform to announce its local business needs and to get integrated into the Global Change Management. Several meetings and training sessions have been performed to transfer the process to the target site. With our help one individual has been identified as Local Release Manager inside the local organization to supervise and drive the local activities. We analyzed the existing back end sites, recorded lessons learnt and deployment issues existing in the past and at present. We found that the installed MES versions are off the main branch, difficult to maintain and to upgrade. Certain blocking points and legacy applications prevented a full update. Despite the faced difficulties we decided to implement the multi-site rollout approach: Take the currently existing MES Solution, adapt it to the local requirements and roll it out.

After analyzing and reviewing the current status we implemented the following activities:
• Created local visibility for global activities by including the site into the regular Change Control Board meeting and status meetings
• Derived corrective actions from issues existing at existing backend fabs, solved blocking points and designed target solution
• Derived project from aligned business demands and integrated local requirements
• Regularly assigned and reviewed team assignments with project management.
• Helped executing the offsite project including regression tests on target system configuration. Assigned and allocated hardware resources.
• Established local issue tracking system and helped escalate prioritized resolution.
• Ensured deployment strategy is feasible for local organization and executed deployment rehearsal offsite.
• Coached actual deployment to production on site and fixed installation issues.

The target fab is now running with the same MES as the other backend fabs. We successfully replaced legacy applications and synchronized the MES to the latest version of the companies' main deployment branch. We executed the deployment to the new fab and trained local resources to own the new system. For future enhancements the subsidiary is included in the backend clusters communication and release management process to ensure local business demands are addressed and aligned properly and in time.

The Results: Our Consultant enabled the client to run the current MES versions along with the other cluster fabs. Because the business demands are now also aligned throughout the entire organization, changes and enhancements to the software solution are introduced in less time and more efficiently with less effort. Our Client can now react more quickly to necessary changes in its business process, what proves vital for its fast paced business. A process proves its strength if it can be dubbed and lived within geographically dispersed teams. It can then generate similarity effects leading to higher efficiency and alignment throughout the entire organization. Further more also small subsidiaries can now access the knowledge base, experience and resources of the parent organization while running the same Manufacturing Execution System Software.

Manufacturing Component Design
Client:  Customer Confidential
Location:  Portland, Oregon
Industry: Manufacturing – 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

Duality Principle Role:
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Requirements Engineering
• Manufacturing Component Solution Design

Business Challenge: Our client is a leading provider of manufacturing systems within multiple manufacturing industries. One of their customers to understand the feasibility of porting their exceptions workflow application as the legacy application did not meet the current or anticipated future needs of their users.  The customer clearly desired a controlled application with the capability to track each step of the planned and actual exception flow. The goal of the new application was better tracking capabilities (including control and data collection) to enable faster learning cycles and reduce the mis-processing potential that was inherent within the legacy application.  One additional capability that their customer required was the implementation of a reporting layer to promote greater process transparency and better informed decision making.

Our client selected to work with our Manufacturing Services so that they could leverage the application domain knowledge and subject matter expertise to immediately respond to the customer’s request for a proposal.  For them, it was critical to engage a consultant that could come into the project with minimal required learning cycles.

Duality Principle Solution: Within our manufacturing services, we have significant application domain knowledge of manufacturing systems and multiple consultants with manufacturing subject matter expertise.  In order to meet the aggressive schedules of this project, we engaged a consultant to work on this project who could immediately review the material, refine the requirements, perform a detailed analysis and provide a design proposal as to possible solutions.  The solutions analysis, leveraged our internal principle of “Reuse, Buy, then Build” in order to be able to determine the best possible approaches to be used by our client and eventually their internal customer.  
 
The Results: Our consultant collaborated with the a key resource within our client and directly with leads of their internal customers.  We were able to own and drive the overall requirements engineering process to ensure appropriate scope of the deliverables, lead the design proposal activity and coordinate internal buy-in of the proposed solution.  The design proposal contained, in detail the following elements:
1. Design Specification and Validation
2. Detailed Estimates of the custom user interface work that would need to be done
3. A detailed design proposal of the overall process, primary and alternate flows and coupled system interaction

Experiments Management
Client:  Spansion
Location:  Sunnyvale, California / Aizu-Wakamastsu, Japan
Industry: Manufacturing - 300mm Semiconductor Fabrication

Duality Principle Role:
• Enterprise Architecture Planning
• Collaboration Facilitation
• Vendor Management
• Manufacturing Systems Expertise
• Solution Architecture
• Systems Engineering
• Software Engineering

Background: A manufacturing company optimizes technology development by seamlessly integrating process experiments into standard process flow inside its existing MES Software maintaining full automation.

Business Challenge: A large known manufacturing company, needed to have their existing ‘Manufacturing Execution System’ software extended to support specific business requirements to achieve highly controlled and structured handling of pre-planned process deviations, so called Experiments. The enhancement will enable a structured and integrated definition, setup and execution of process deviations within the current MES. The experiment definition should not require any master data Changes.

The Project should enable basic Experiments Management functionality by implementing a complete Software Development Life Cycle:
• gather Business Use Cases
• develop Requirements and define aligned Project Scope
• Analysis and selection of the most optimal Architecture (Business & Information Systems)
• Solution Architecture specifications (UML)
• Creation of Test Cases and Specification
• Implementation of the solution
• continuously testing of the solution (unit, scenario, integration and stress testing)
• training of the end users
• obtain client acceptance
• deploy the solution into Production

The biggest challenge is the management of a geographically dispersed team and other 3rd party vendors.

Duality Principle Solution: Before we started to work on the application design and implementation we had to ensure some essentials things as prerequisites:
• interview Subject Matter Experts and business stakeholders to verify and extend the existing business Use Cases
• review current MES Solution for possible integration points

Taken the results from the business analysis we collected requirements and created the project scope together with the responsible business units consisting of:
• define and setup experiments through separate GUI Application
• visualize experiment definition for easy review
• enable experiment execution seamlessly within current MES solution by submitting interface requirements for needed integration points

After knowing the scope, we designed and implemented the GUI Framework together with the integration artifacts. Test cases are back traceable to the individual requirements have been created and executed. We ensured a constant feedback loop from the testers and our client by implementing the rapid SCRUM development methodology. We resolved many dependencies to internal and external teams and systems as this project turned out to be no standard standalone solution but a tough integration topic.

Results: As a result, the client is recognizing drastic improvements in its technology development process. Process Deviations are defined in a consisted manner across the organization by removing human error common to complex setup systems.

The execution system now in place provides the extendable ability to automatically execute basic experiment functionality with support for critical fab-floor operations. This enabled our client to accelerate its technology development process, proven vital in its industry segment. The final product was delivered in high-quality in the time allotted.