Single Device Tracking: How semiconductor leaders transform the Advanced Packaging challenge 

FAQs

1. What is the core manufacturing challenge with advanced packaging?

Advanced packaging creates complex manufacturing, quality and compliance challenges: managing production of multi-chiplet modules, mixed-product lots, and item-level device tracking—all without sacrificing production speed or quality.

The core challenge is achieving complete device tracking for quality and compliance without compromising production efficiency, which is compounded by the fact that most manufacturers cannot perform single device tracking without slowing operations.

2. What is the difference between tracing and tracking?

These terms are often used interchangeably but are fundamentally different:

Tracing answers the past: “Where did this come from?” It’s backward-looking genealogy.

Traceability is the ability to trace a device’s status back to its point of origin, providing an audit trail.

Traceability answers the backward question: it shows customers materials, origins, processing steps, equipment, and conditions for every device.

Customers demand both: complete history (traceability) and real-time visibility (tracking). Together, they provide the complete picture customers require today.

3. Why is single item traceability essential?

Single item traceability is critical for three main reasons:

1. Quality

• Quality requirements are increasingly stringent
• Must identify where quality issues arise with sufficient detail
• Cost of downstream quality issues pushed upstream to suppliers, demanding complete and detailed traceability data

2. Product Complexity

• Complex products (multi-chip modules, systems in packages, IGBTs) cannot be tracked using conventional means
• Must track at sub-device or chiplet level AND final package level
• Advanced packaging compounds product complexity and quality challenges

3. Product Mix

• Product mix gets increasingly complex with customer-specific capabilities and legacy product support
• Enhanced automation supports high product variability without impacting output (enabling lot size = one)
• Shopfloor systems must keep pace with enhanced tracking and tracing capabilities

4. What are the main challenges in implementing single item tracking?

Three critical challenges must be overcome:

1. Performance

• Millions of devices must be traced simultaneously
• Moving from lot/wafer level to single item traceability increases MES transactions by multiple orders of magnitude
• Traditional MES (Manufacturing Execution System) architectures cannot handle these transaction levels without impacting shopfloor output
• Must achieve performance without slowing production speed

2. Flexibility

• System must support multiple trackable entities (wafers, carriers, individual items)
• Must easily switch between different levels of traceability
• Must accommodate both automatic and manual production flows

Example: Processing a wafer at one step, a carrier with items at the next, individual items after that

3. Analytics

• Little value in recording single item data without extraction and reporting capabilities
• Must provide meaningful insights from massive datasets
• Requires thoughtful data structure and reporting architecture

5. Why can’t traditional MES systems handle single device tracking?

Traditional MES systems were architected for lot-level or wafer-level traceability. Single item tracking increases transaction volumes by multiple orders of magnitude, creating performance bottlenecks. Standard MES systems cannot:

• Process millions of individual device transactions without slowing shopfloor output
• Flexibly switch between different traceability levels
• Efficiently handle the database load from single-item level tracking
• Provide real-time performance at production speed

6. How can a High Performance Engine (HPE) equip MES for single device tracking?

HPE is an architectural innovation within Siemens Opcenter EX that enables single item tracking without slowing down production. It works by:

• Load Shifting: Moves processing from the application server to the database server, reducing bottlenecks
• Optimization: Reduces the number of round trips between servers
• Transaction Modification: Redesigns shopfloor transactions to leverage HPE capabilities
• Flexible Modeling: Supports multiple trackable entities and switching between them
• Speed: Achieves >300 transactions per second with up to 98% improvement in execution time
• Enabling tracking of thousands of transactions per second

7. What is the role of MES in single item traceability?

MES (Manufacturing Execution System) is the key source of data for traceability. However, a two-database architecture is typically required:

Production Database:

• Optimized for real-time shopfloor operations
• Purged periodically to maintain fast production speed
• Handles high-volume transactions

Reporting Database:

• Maintains complete historical traceability data
• Preserved for as long as needed for compliance, audits, and quality investigations
• Supports analytics and reporting on single item data

Database separation allows manufacturers to achieve production speed without sacrificing traceability data completeness.

8. How does single item tracking improve quality management?

Single item tracking improves quality management by:

Root Cause Analysis:

• Provides sufficient detail to identify exactly where quality issues arise
• Enables tracing of problematic devices back to specific equipment, conditions, and processing steps
• Supports rapid corrective action

Quality Requirements:

• Meets increasingly stringent quality standards
• Addresses 72% of semiconductor companies experiencing stronger customer demand for quality
• Captures complete history: materials, origins, processing steps, equipment, and conditions

Cost Management:

• Identifies quality issues upstream before they become expensive downstream problems
• Reduces cost of non-quality by catching issues early
• Provides detailed traceability data demanded by customers and suppliers

Compliance:

• Maintains complete audit trail for regulatory requirements
• Supports quality certifications and customer audits
• Enables rapid response to quality recalls or investigations

References:

1. Allied Market Research, Semiconductor Packaging Market (2021-2030), 2021, Semiconductor Packaging Market Size, Share Analysis – 2030

2. Julie Fraser – Tech-Clarity, Retool Semiconductor Innovation for Profit: A Lifecycle Approach for Smart Products and Devices, Page 4, 2021, Microsoft Word – Tech-Clarity-White-Paper-Retool-Semiconductor-Innovation-final.docx