Chi Mei Optoelectronics To Automate FPD Fab
Consilium Inc. (Mountain View, CA), an Applied Materials Inc. company(Santa Clara, CA), has received a multimillion dollar order from Taiwan-based flat panel display manufacturer Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. for software licenses and services to control and automate the company's new thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT-LCD) fab in Tainan, Taiwan.
Chi Mei Optoelectronics president J.Y. Ho noted that the company's total plant investment is several hundred million dollars. "It is important that we ramp up to full production very quickly." The company will implement the Consilium WorkStream distributed factory system (DFS) to automate and control systems and processes throughout its fab.
TFT-LCDs, which use large-scale, conventional semiconductor manufacturing technology in their fabrication process, are expected to eventually displace conventional cathode ray screens in TVs and computer monitors. FPD manufacturing demands extensive automated processing and transport equipment as well as software modeling of complex materials relationships and equipment status.