Centre for Enterprise Research and Innovation (CERI)
Equipment reliability - Intel Ireland Ltd
Company profile
Intel introduced the world's first microprocessor in 1971. Today, Intel is the world's largest chip maker and is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking, and communications products. Ireland is Intel's semiconductor manufacturing and technology centre for Europe, based in Leixlip, County Kildare, and the largest manufacturing site outside the United States. The existing factories manufacture Pentium® III and Pentium® 4 support chips and Flash technology.
Company challenge
High Precision Maintenance (HPM) is a new term coined by Intel as a strategic vision, which relies on enhancing production equipment availability whilst maintaining high levels of quality and productivity. The challenge is how to achieve such a vision.
The solution
Intel received a recommendation from an employee that attended a lecture in the US delivered by Dr. Lee and Prof. Labib of the Portsmouth Business School, which was very applicable to what we were looking for. We invited Professor Labib to visit the facility and advise on possible HPM strategies, we also asked the Professor to deliver a training session on HPM to our management staff.
The benefits
Of the consultancy:
- It was good to see that several participants took some ideas from the presentation and tested them in their factories.
- Good progress in the area of HPM has been achieved since we had the class.
- We are aware of the fact that this is a long and never ending journey to improve our equipment performance.
"Working with Prof. Labib was great, the whole administrative process around invoices and payment was not efficient and took a long time" Igal Ben-Rachel, High Precision Maintenance Director, Intel Ireland Ltd.
Next steps
No next step is planned, yet specific factories that were exposed to this work may elevate a future need for specific topics.
University contact
Professor Ashraf Labib, +44 (0)23 9284 4729