Cross-Training Technicians & Engineers for Semiconductor Manufacturing

半导体(S/C)制造业在美国经济中增长迅速。然而，为这个主要经济部门提供训练有素的劳动力的能力严重落后于需求。此外，随着对技术员的技术和角色需求的增加，他们在统计和单元工艺操作领域的核心知识与S/C工厂的工程师的核心知识日益重叠。相反，新工程师可能会在工厂环境中负责技术人员的监督，他们需要更好地了解技术人员的工作范围，并在他们的学术课程期间接受更多的实践培训。因此，在类似工厂的共享环境中为选定的设备密集型课程交叉培训S/C的工程师和技术人员是有利的，而不是人为地强制各自课程之间完全衔接。这种按单元划分的并列培训降低了每个学生的实验室成本，从而降低了培训成本，同时还有助于：(1)对现有工厂技术人员和工程师进行交叉培训，以实现终身学习；(2)对社区学院和大学教师进行交叉培训；(3)对后来选择从事工程职业的技术人员进行学术迁移。在这个项目中，一个由三个毗连的州的三所大学和三个社区学院系统组成的联合体，每个都以S/C制造业为经济背景，正在促进技术人员和工程师的并肩培训，并支持计算机辅助课程模块的开发、使用和评估，这些模块将整合到工厂式的实验室和相关课程中。这些模块将从技术人员和工程角度涵盖S/C单元的工艺及其设施需求。多媒体模块被设计为独立运行或耦合到多级制造模拟器组件。它们可以在真实、模拟或类似于虚拟工厂的实验室中满足培训需求，也可以用于评估。

The semiconductor (S/C) manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy is growing rapidly. However, the ability to supply a well-trained workforce for this major economic sector is severely lagging the demand. Furthermore, as the technical and role demands for technicians increase, their core knowledge in the areas of statistics and unit-process operations increasingly overlaps that of engineers in an S/C plant. Conversely, new engineers, who may become responsible for technician oversight in a factory setting, need to better understand the job scope of technicians, as well as receive more hands-on training during their academic program. It is thus advantageous to cross-train S/C engineers and technicians in shared factory-like settings for selected equipment-intensive courses, without artificially forcing complete articulation between respective curricula. Such side-by-side training, broken into unit modules, decreases per-student lab costs, and thus training costs, while also facilitating: (1) cross-training of existing factory technicians and engineers, for lifelong learning, (2) cross-training of community college and university faculty, and (3) academic migration of technicians who later choose to pursue engineering careers. In this project, a consortium of three universities and three community college systems in three contiguous states, each having S/C manufacturing as an economic backdrop, is facilitating side-by-side training of technicians and engineers, bolstered by the development, utilization, and evaluation of computer-aided curriculum modules to be integrated into factory-like labs and related courses. These modules will cover S/C unit processes and their facility demands from both technician and engineering perspectives. The multimedia modules are being designed to function either independently or coupled to a multilevel manufacturing simulator package. They can serve training needs in real, mock, or virtual factory-like labs, or they can be used for assessment.