This project showcases how functional modeling can drive innovation by analyzing and simulating various versions of a vacuum cleaner. By studying the functional model, you will experience firsthand how the Functional Modeling creative thinking tool helps identify opportunities for improvement and generate innovative ideas for the next generation of products. Through this example, you’ll learn how to dissect the functionality of a vacuum cleaner, revealing ways to enhance its performance, efficiency, and user experience—ultimately paving the way for future innovations.
Copper electroplating is essential for forming advanced semiconductor interconnects, yet radial thickness non-uniformity remains a costly challenge. Thicker deposition at the wafer edge and thinner copper at the center force manufacturers to rely on overplating and CMP compensation, increasing material waste and process cost. Using the PRIZ Platform, this project reveals that the true amplification mechanism lies in operating within a kinetically controlled regime, where small voltage variations caused by seed-layer resistance produce large thickness deviations. By shifting the process closer to diffusion-controlled behavior and reducing sensitivity to voltage fluctuations, uniform deposition can be achieved intrinsically — enabling thinner seed layers, reduced overplating, lower CMP burden, and overall cost reduction.
To reduce high turnover at the plant the managers propose different ideas, but it does not help. All proposed solutions are good, but there are some of them that are blocking the effectiveness of the rest of the solutions. The purpose of the project is to analyze the proposed solutions (perceptions) and define the blocked. The solutions with high blocking rank should be completed first to ensure the effectiveness of the rest of the ideas. The Perception Mapping (PMap) creative thinking tool was used for the blockers definition.
Who is the most important at a manufacturing plant? Do you believe that management is the most important? We created a Functional Model of a typical manufacturing and revealed that Process Engineers are the most functional. So, if you want your production to be successful, invest in process engineers first.
The project was dedicated to production yield improvement in microchip manufacturing. The bumps are created on the top of a wafer and used for the final test of all dies. Only good dies are taken for the packaging. All dies that fail the test will be scrapped. The process yield depends on the amount of "good" and "bad" dies. It was revealed that in some cases, the time between the end of the process and the final test impacts the yield. The longer the dwelling, the more dies fail the final test. If the dwelling exceeds hundreds of hours, the amount of failed dies becomes dramatically high, which results in the scrapping of the whole wafer. The problem was analyzed and solved.