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How does an entire semiconductor factory become FUBAR from being offline for a year?

• cduzz 3y ago
  The example is hypothetical, but complex machines can be complex to keep running, and often suffer catastrophically when shut down. If the fab was barely profitable before shutting down, it doesn't take much to total it. Fabs are full of machines that cost tens of millions of dollars when they were new and there are simply no spare parts of vendor support for them now, and you can't just swap in a modern replacement. Fabs are full of extremely sensitive environments (no dust here, acid that will kill you if you touch it there, constant temperatures, no humidity, etc). If any of that is compromised, it's now just a toxic waste dump. Again, I have no specific knowledge in this domain, but I imagine most of the time the owner's happy enough just to walk away from the headache.
  • tyingq 3y ago
    There's also the brain drain aspect. All the process engineers and techs that understood all the various "recipes", quirks, etc, of the various machines moved on to other work. A new crew will eventually work it out, but there's a lot of trial and error getting to the right bake time/temps, spin rpm, etc, etc. Yield and rework suffers while they do that.
• TheCondor 3y ago
  Not an expert, but there are additional start up costs that need to be spent to “start it up.” With any significant downtime, those could eat up any possible profit unless it’s a newest technology fab.
• JAlexoid 3y ago
  Dust is the simplest example. Once you shut off the dust extraction, you may just end up with too much dust collected in the equipment to make it utterly useless.