Many articles and books have been written that discuss and study the techniques of lean thinking and methodologies. The applications of these methodologies have included such industries as manufacturing, health care, and information technology. Application to analytical laboratories has been rare or non-existent due to the inability to apply lean methodologies to a process with ‘unique’ analytical work flows as well as a lack of a direct connection to the manufacturing value stream. The following paper describes the work done in a semiconductor failure analysis laboratory to visualize work flow, design a forecasting model, and create a management system. The result of which has been sustained and improved quality, resource utilization, and delivery of actionable root cause failure analysis.

Magnetic Field Imaging (MFI) and Thermal Laser Stimulation (TLS) failure analysis (FA) techniques (e.g. OBIRCH, XIVA, ect.) both have advantages and disadvantages. The obstacles encountered from these techniques may hinder further fault isolation (FI), lengthen turn-around-time and/or detract from actionable results. MFI using a Giant Magneto Resistance (GMR) sensor is compared to TLS techniques to understand the capability of the MFI technique at finding shorting defects. A short within a capacitor bank is successfully isolated using both techniques.

An electrically open defect on a laminate may not always be found timely or successfully due to the lack of fault isolation techniques for this type of defect. This is partly due to needing high frequency techniques to isolate the location of the open. Magnetic field imaging (MFI) using a Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) is a technique that maps, in this case, an RF signal through a trace, up until the open defect boundary. Several obstacles are introduced when using an RF signal, one of which is the shielding of the signal from the external world. Despite this obstacle, analysis of an open in an arbitrary location along a laminate under a copper plane is proven successful using this technique.