AN AUTOMATIC PM (PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE) MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR MODERN MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT

The objective of the project is to design, develop, produce and deliver a system that is
capable of tracking the operating duration of Final Test equipments in the production
floor of a semiconductor manufacturing plant. The significance of the project is that a
working solution at low cost will be delivered to address the problems faced by the
industry. The project deliveries will be an automatic PM (Preventive Maintenance)
Management system that can precisely record and store the operating duration of the
equipment. The stored data is essential for efficiently and economically managing,
planning and scheduling the PM activities at the manufacturing facilities. Currently, the
PM activities are not well managed due to the large amount of equipment and individual
parts to be monitored upon. Thus, the PM activities often suffer from non precision and
inaccuracy. Failure to perform properly scheduled PM activities might cause the
equipment to breakdown and also sacrifice the quality of the manufacturing process.
Currently, the equipment are monitored manually and it requires extensive human labor
and time. The PM Management system designed involves the integration of readily
available hardware; a personal computer, a digital I/O card and the design of optoisolating
protective circuit. Concurrently, a graphical user interface (GUI) with Multiple
Document Interface (MDI) features has been designed and developed using Visual Basic
6.0 software. The prototype system has been tested and run on the real production floor at
the semiconductor manufacturer. This confirms and verifies the functionality of the
proposed system.