OBSTACLES TO SYSTEMIC INNOVATION

An Illustration From Semiconductor Manufacturing TechnologyFig. 2. Increasing cost of advanced semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Assuming 800 150mm wafer Starts per day (tolliver, In essence, microenvironment technology is a wafer transport and storage sys tem consisting of an integrated collection of robotics, automation techniques, tool enclosures, and wafer pods that are used to maintain the wafers in a Class 1 (i.e one 0.5},lm particle per cubic foot) ambient. Even so, it is not an especially com plex technology in the usual sense of the term. Indeed, microenvironment technol ogy is fairly straightforward in nature. It consists of nothing more than conventional manufacturing enclosures and robotics for handling and transporting wafers. The radical quality of microenvironment technology is n0t in its complexity, but in the way it alters how manufacturers must think about the wafer processing system.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.