ToolTrack MES Transforms Silicon Valley Foundry Operations

The Challenge

Noel Technologies, a successful Silicon Valley foundry based in Campbell, CA, specializes in the development and optimization of a wide variety of semiconductor processes. As a foundry serving multiple customers with highly variable process requirements, Noel faced a challenge common to growing mid-size manufacturers: the tools that worked at smaller scale were breaking down under increased complexity.

Three symptoms were driving the problem:

• The pitfalls of spreadsheets. Excel and similar tools were being used well beyond their intended scope — tracking inventory, routing materials, and managing process instructions across a growing operation. As the process library expanded, spreadsheets became too cumbersome to maintain reliably.
• Need for flexibility. With over 1,000 variables of service offerings, Noel needed a system that could adapt to their process complexity without requiring custom software development every time a new product or recipe was introduced.
• Organizational inertia. The existing processes were deeply entrenched. The right approach wasn't to patch the existing system — it was to replace it entirely with something purpose-built for how manufacturing should work.

Noel engaged CRS in 2015 to implement ToolTrack MES as their new operations management backbone.

The ToolTrack Solution

CRS deployed ToolTrack MES at Noel Technologies in Summer 2015 without disruption to ongoing operations. The implementation addressed Noel's three core symptoms with a unified platform:

1. A single source of truth. ToolTrack replaced the web of paper travelers, emails, and file attachments with a single, authoritative record of what should be done and what has been done. Modular operations, recipes, and routing blocks gave Noel's team a structured way to manage process complexity, reducing the number of traveler types by more than 30%. Process changes could be pushed to the shop floor immediately through the web interface, eliminating the lag and version control problems that came with paper-based workflows.

2. Real-time decision-making from anywhere. Because Noel provides foundry services, every wafer in the facility belongs to a customer. Before ToolTrack, determining the exact position of customer material and providing a realistic ETA required manually searching through paper travelers and asking technicians on the floor. With ToolTrack, a single click populates an Inventory Dashboard showing all material in each area of the fab, broken out by customer and sales order.

3. Integrated quality and audit capability. ToolTrack's single application interface allowed Noel to capture ISO audit data and corrective actions directly within the system, with changes made in revision-controlled documents without leaving the application. Every critical event (the who, what, where, when, and why) is linked and searchable within the same interface used on the shop floor.

Results

The full system deployment for Noel was quoted at less than 10% of what many competitors charge. The initial setup period was approximately six weeks, after which Noel provided detailed input on functionality and the system was iterated upon for another two to four weeks. Critically, Noel was able to begin training users on the core functionality within a live system while enhancements were being transparently added in the background, with no big-bang go-live cutover required.

Noel Technologies has continued to harvest productivity gains and remains a satisfied customer more than a decade after initial deployment.