Improving communication and collaboration in process development

Abstract

Personal experiences gained through previous developments provide a major contribution to new developments and idea generation. Generating a new idea for a new product or product enhancement oftentimes is a matter of communicating with others or brainstorm-ing about related topics. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature this is especially true in the area of process and device design for MEMS and NEMS. However, today the communi-cation between the different team members, especially if not co-located or belonging to different legal entities, is oftentimes hampered and on an inappropriate level. This can cause double experimentation, miscommunication of properties, uninformed decisions and so forth. Even deadlocks in the development might occur.

This paper introduces a systematic software guided approach to improve the communica-tion during MNT product development endeavors. The presented methodology and soft-ware provide a common, centralized platform to organize and track the data and infor-mation gathered during the research and development phase of MNT products. They al-low having everybody on the same page due to automatic data collection concerning sta-tus, processing, metrology results, etc. and providing protected access to selected data and information. Furthermore the use of communication fostering techniques like building 3D models of MNT devices through TCAD tools and other virtual manufacturing techniques is eased.

The English version of the reprinted publication in the proceedings of the COMS2011 conference can be downloaded if you login / register.