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Factory Overview and Certification Intel's manufacturing organization encompasses wafer fabrication, assembly, high-volume testing, boards manufacturing, and outsourcing.
Factory overview
Intel's geographically-dispersed manufacturing organization consists of:
- Wafer fabrication facilities in the United States, Ireland, and Israel
- Assembly and test facilities in the United States, Malaysia, Costa Rica, China, and the Philippines
- Subcontracting and outsourcing facilities in multiple worldwide locations
- Late introduction of new design rules into an existing technology is difficult due to the critical mass of existing design collateral and a lengthy assessment and/or qualification process
At each manufacturing site, the Quality and Reliability staff monitors quality, provides feedback to the Product Design and Technology Development organizations, and participates in problem solving. The local quality and reliability organizations report jointly to local site management and the Corporate Quality Network management, thus meeting local needs and maintaining policy consistency across Intel.
Internal training organizations develop and provide training for manufacturing job functions, including supervisors, engineers, and factory support personnel. All manufacturing technicians and production operators receive training for their jobs and certification to a set of competencies. Each factory has a training group that is responsible for developing manufacturing skills specific to its needs. Intel emphasizes training in statistics, Statistical Process Control, structured problem solving, and team building.
The local organizations have the responsibility and authority to improve product quality and reliability through the following actions:
- Identify and record problems and corrective actions
- Initiate and provide solutions and improvements
- Verify implementation of solutions
- Control nonconforming products until deficiencies are corrected
- Initiate actions to prevent nonconformities
- Share information and best-known methods across the geographically-dispersed organizations
Factory certification
Intel uses the ISO 9001:2000 International Standard as the baseline for our quality system. All of Intel's mature manufacturing Wafer Fabrication, Assembly/Test sites, and Logistics centers are registered to ISO 9001:2000 by a third-party registrar. The ISO 9001:2001 International Standard implements a system of standards and procedures that ensures product uniformity across manufacturing sites. Certificates are available for viewing at Intel® ISO Registrations.
New sites implement an ISO 9001:2000-based quality system at their start-up and are registered as soon as enough time has passed to gather historical data. Sites must demonstrate that their quality system has been in use for a minimum of six months prior to registration.