Systems Engineering and Modeling at Start-Up Company

Systems Engineering originated in the military and aerospace industry. Typical companies applying Systems Engineering are large, running programs of hundreds to tens of thousands person years. We have been assisting in applying Systems Engineering techniques and methods in a small (tens of persons) start-up company in the semiconductor process and equipment market. We report our observations in this start-up company with an innovative product operating in a dynamic environment. Start-up companies in general explore new applications or new technologies: an environment full of unknowns, uncertainties and other surprises. In the specific case of semiconductor process and equipment the system is highly multi-disciplinary, amongst others: high precision mechanical, control, optics, chemical, signal processing, and power electronics. One of the main challenges in a system were so many technologies have to be developed is to create an understanding of the integral system, while working on its components. Every component in itself requires lots of engineering attention, which makes it difficult to pay sufficient attention to the system itself. We applied the recommendations from the Systems modeling and Analysis course taught at Buskerud University College (BUC), such as time-boxing, multi-view iteration, visualization, and quantification. The combined effect of these recommendations has been that the engineering of the components got early system level validation through design reviews. A number of significant risks were identified during the reviews and addressed afterwards. Introduction The main purpose of this paper is to describe a case of the application of Systems Engineering techniques and methods at a start-up company. We have argued before [Muller 2009] that Systems Engineering is a rather young field. The field of Systems Engineering needs observational research to facilitate the academic researchers to gradually build up ontologies, followed by theories. This paper provides one more sample of Systems Engineering as it is practiced in the field today. We specifically apply modeling and analysis techniques as we are teaching these techniques at BUC. The specific contribution of this paper is the application of these techniques in a small start-up company. Systems Engineering originated in the military and aerospace industry. Typical companies in the military and aerospace industry are large, running programs of hundreds to tens of thousands person years. A lot of knowledge captured in the INCOSE Systems Engineering handbook [INCOSE 2007], and standards such as [DoD 2003] originate in these domains. In contrast, this start-up company deploys tens of persons. Note also that the circumstances in the mature and heavily regulated defense industry are quite different than the semiconductor start-up company, where an innovative technology has to penetrate a fast moving industry. We have been asked by the start-up company to participate as researcher, since the management of the company is convinced of the value of systems engineering for this kind of multidisciplinary systems. The expectation of the company is that independent researchers are valuable as reviewer and reflector. The Start-up Company background Replisaurus Technologies is a Swedish start-up company developing a process to print copper patterns on wafers. We provide here a brief background, based on the website www.replisaurus.com. The founder of Replisaurus developed the technology during his MSc work in California, see [Fredenberg 2005, Möller 2005]. The process replaces 6 process steps in the “back-end” processing facilities by one single step. The process also shows very good printing capabilities: structures in the order of microns with well-defined and sharp walls. In semiconductor design these copper structures have many applications, for example antenna structures for telecommunication chips. Figure 1. Example of copper structures printed with Replisaurus technology Replisaurus innovates the copper printing process. Conventional processes require 8 steps to print the copper. The Replisaurus technology, Electro Chemical Pattern Replication (ECPR), replaces 6 out of 8 steps by one new step. Figure 2 shows the traditional and the new process. Figure 2. Replisaurus ECPR technology replaces 6 process steps by one process step. Modeling the System In 2007 the copper printing process was being developed by means of an improvised printer using prototype modules. Regular copper print equipment, reliable and with high throughput, is needed to facilitate mass production in semiconductor factories (the term semiconductor factories is shortened to fab in the domain). The development of an alpha tool was started in 2007. This alpha tool development focused on the core functions. In 2008 a time-boxed modeling workshop took place, to ensure that the ongoing developments fit well together and fit in the customer context. Figure 3. Overview of the different scopes that are relevant for Replisaurus. The process chamber contains the core technology required for the copper printing process. The process chamber is part of the Copper printer semiconductor company customer fab mask production chip design Copper cell Copper printer process chamber wafer stage optics clean