Applications of RFID technology for improving production efficiency in an integrated-circuit packaging house

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an emerging technology that can expand the possibilities for data capture. The use of RFID technology for process control and material handling applications can produce benefits of flexibility and interactivity. An integrated-circuit (IC) packaging house must be able to provide clients with instant and accurate information on its products and services. For doing that, an IC packaging house must keep track of all its wafers, regardless of whether those wafers are in packaging, testing, or shipping. In this study, RFID technology is combined with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for resolving various wafer receiving and inventory transaction problems. An electronic control system is developed using Oracle application implementation methodology (AIM) to integrate RFID technology and the ERP system. This electronic control system has been implemented at a local IC packaging company. Results from this study suggest that RFID contributes significant improvements to the wafer receiving process and the inventory transaction process that reduce labour costs and man-made errors. Besides that, our control system greatly reduces operators' workloads and operation costs.