Implementation of an E-BOM Copy Method for an Order-specific Semiconductor Equipment

In this paper we propose an engineering bill of materials (E-BOM) copy method that can be utilized to manage the product information for each equipment during building a product lifecycle management (PLM) system in the order-specific semiconductor equipment manufacturer. The previous works studied on an E-BOM creation and management method for the mass manufacturing and production. The method is difficult to apply to an environment in which many engineering changes occur and the different specification to each equipment is required such as semiconductor equipments and facilities adopting built-to-order instead of built for inventory. Moreover the method is known to be the major drawback to deteriorate the design efficiency. Our E-BOM copy method enables users efficiently to manage the specification of a product and shortens the product development cycle. To implement the E-BOM copy method in the PLM environment, we developed the E-BOM copy system that automatically generates new parts and their numbers according to the numbering rule while copying the E-BOM from existing semiconductor equipments and then can apply the parts for reuse to new semiconductor equipments. This system can duplicate not only 3D CAD data but also technical documents.