New Frontiers In Fault Detection And Classification
AI is enabling timelier and more accurate data, but AI-based command and control has yet to appear.
IC manufacturers are increasingly relying on intelligent data processing to prevent downtime, improve yields, and reduce scrap, and they are integrating that with fault detection and classification (FDC) to trace faults to their cause.
Today’s FDC systems feature better sensors, variability control, and both predictive and prescriptive modeling.
In the future, FDC will enable real-time decision-making using tools like LLMs and agentic AI.
A big part of what has changed in FDC revolves around fault prediction.
“Traditional FDC wasn’t predictive,” said Jon Herlocker, vice president and general manager of Tignis, a Cohu Analytics Solution.
“It relied on humans and their process/equipment expertise to identify a precondition to a fault and then monitor for that. Such approaches were not automated, engineering-intensive, and slow to respond.
Author's summary: AI improves fault detection and classification.