Identification of failure modes on electrostatic chuck through reliability centered maintenance: a case study

Quality of any reliability analysis depends strongly on the analyst’s ability to identify all required functions. Failure is a basic concept of any reliability analysis. Also, the plant equipment’s reliability is of vital importance in any production operation. The objective of the present study was to investigate the failure modes of critical systems in the manufacturing process of micro-chips by using Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) technique. In industries, RCM is employed to decide maintenance strategies using reliability data. The most critical component of the system was found to be Electrostatic Chuck (ESC) used in etching process. This technique was helpful in reducing the failure modes of critical equipment. Analyses were performed to observe the improvement in the system’s efficiency. Downtime data was collected due to various faults in critical equipment. In the current research, various RCM analysis were performed on electrostatic chuck to ensure that shifting the maintenance technique to RCM would increase the revenue generation for the industry. This analysis was performed in Texas Instruments, UK. The results for optimum life of equipment, obtained after performing RCM, were quite high. Proper scheduling and planning improved the time of productive maintenance from 25% to 35%. Planning through Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) boosted the efficiency up to 90%. The obtained results were compared with the current maintenance techniques; e.g., corrective maintenance. Solutions were recommended for the identified modes of failures and ways to eliminate the factors that cause failures on ESC.