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AS MANKIND MAKES THE transition to a digital world, the race to make chips better, faster, and smaller has taken the semiconductor industry into a whirlwind of robotic automation. To an important degree, it is a bellwether for other industrial sectors-would-be robot users and sellers alike.
In the semiconductor industry, there are no theoretical arguments on whether to deploy robots, because there really are no practical alternatives, says Mitchell Weiss, vice president-strategy/technology at PRI Automation Inc., Billerica, Mass.
The company, which was first known as Precision Robots Inc., began by offering robotic solutions in the 1980s as semiconductor manufacturers began to incorporate tool automation into their facilities with the goal of increasing production yields. Robots were cleaner than humans and more capable of accurately and gently repeating programmed tasks, explains Weiss. As chips grew tiny, the mere presence of workers in the fabricating facilities (fabs) began to threaten the need for increased cleanliness despite the standard issue of protective suits, boots, goggles, gloves, and head gear.
Consider this air cleanliness comparison: A cubic foot of air in an office or home typically contains 700,000 contaminant particles, but semiconductor fabs can barely tolerate one contaminant particle per cubic foot of air. That requirement is 1,000 times cleaner than a hospital operating room, but it is something that automation equipment such as robots can easily meet.
Confronted by the enormity of the semiconductor demand-consumption surpassing $144 billion in 1995 and projected to exceed $350 billion by 2000-PRI today is more than a robot maker. It has become a supplier of a broad range of flexible automation systems, software, and turnkey services that combine advanced robotics technology with sophisticated materialhandling software. The task: handle, transport, store, and track materials during the complex processes of integrated-circuit manufacturing.
The stakes are so high that PRI's customers eagerly adopt automation to stay ahead of the cost/performance curve-which must be a source of considerable envy by PRI's colleagues that make robots for the more prosaic sectors of manufacturing. Fabs are among the most expensive and most complex factories in the world-an average $3,000 to $3,500 per square foot-$1 billion to $2 billion overall. Because fabs are retooled every three to five years and depreciate at a rate of $1 million per day,...