Over the years, one of the strange paradoxes that I have noticed is that the semiconductor industry (and its supporting equipment suppliers) do not adopt communications technology as fast as many "low-tech" businesses. Today, it seems as though the equity, real estate, grocery and automobile industries, among others, have outdistanced us in using the fruits of our own labor. Where they use the Internet, we use e-mail. Where they use e-mail, we use paper! While this does not apply universally, I think you get my point. Why are we being outpaced? I suppose there are many reasons. The main reason, perhaps, is because we don't trust in the confidentiality offered by digital means for expediting communications. Fear of breaching security is followed by our innate conservatism. This is often expressed as, "We never needed this before; why do we need it now?" The answers, my friends, are on this page. Most companies with a semiconductor test organization resist having a direct link between themselves, their equipment and the vendors that created the equipment. When asked, most of them will flatly deny any request for high-speed telecommunications access to their test floors. In fact, most will not allow access to a simple analog phone line connected to a modem attached to their test equipment. Security Issues The managers inside these companies will carp about security issues and then go on to look at the requestor as if he were insane, stupid, rude, of extraterrestrial appearance or perhaps all of the above. In an industry driven by the use of contractors, the vendor's engineers and other test consultants already know most of the sacred information that is supposed to be protected by internal measures. Denying access simply makes everyone slower and less efficient. When test equipment vendors are allowed direct, realtime access, the supplier can immediately diagnose problems without the expense or time delay of physical travel to the customer site.
Perhaps half of the applications and service engineer calls onsite could be eliminated by the installation of ISDN-level telecommunications links between vendor and customer sites. Moderate to high-bandwidth access allows the top engineering talent from the tester design team to participate in several issues around the world in the same day. Getting the most direct connection to these engineers, as soon as possible, is usually the fastest way to get on with testing, production and shipping. The vendor keeps his top talent in play without consuming time for travel. All these benefits are gain merely by dropping one's attachment to an outdated security notion. The benefit certainly outweighs the supposed risk. Let's look at the issue of conservatism, referred to above, the "We never used to need this." Well, we never used to consider using vendor-supplied DFT and BIST solutions, either. And we never demanded turnaround times that take the old six-month test development cycle and reduce it to a few days. All of these mandates require high speed, real time communications. Different times require different measures. 'Internet Economy' If we are serving the "Internet Economy," which runs in "Internet Time," we'd better be able to at least come close to keeping up. Bringing your outside resources virtually inside is hard to do, but we must do this at a rapid pace. Some companies in the test space are doing it now. The customers and vendors that don't open up and hook up will fall behind. And consider that the view behind the competition is not so pretty.
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