The need for semiconductors has exploded since 2010, and despite a recent downturn in 2023, the semiconductor industry is trending toward recovery and long-term growth to more than $1 trillion in revenue by 2030.2 Comparable to previous market cycles, some segments of the semiconductor industry have grown, while others have contracted. In this market cycle, the demand for chips to power smartphones and personal computers has dropped, and the demand for chips used for AI and in autonomous and electric vehicles has surged.3 Meanwhile, semiconductor fabs are handling a wider and more complex variety of chips and designs on their production lines.

Rapidly changing market dynamics and product demand create a whiplash effect for the industry, forcing it to oscillate between the paradigms of cost reduction and throughput maximization. This oscillation complicates the ability of semiconductor fab leadership to plan strategic goals (such as wafer shipments) and tactical daily targets (such as equipment utilization). Independent of the paradigm and pertinent to most goals, our experience has been that performance improvements with existing tooling and manufacturing footprints are often faster, more cost-effective, and more sustainable than commissioning and decommissioning tools and manufacturing expansions. These performance improvements and goal-setting exercises are heavily dependent on a single source of truth that reflects the reality of the fab floor, which can be achieved by implementing in-house, transparent, and top-down analytics, thereby optimizing the potential value of the fab.