Real-Life Decision Making
You are a semiconductor implant technician working for a company that makes
microchips to be used in computers. You work in the company's semiconductor
fabrication facility, or "fab."
You work in the area of the fab called the clean room. This is where the
microchips are actually made. The first stage in making a microchip is to
take a piece of semiconductor material and shape it into a wafer. Most microchips,
including the ones produced at the fab where you work, are made from a semiconductor
material called silicon.
Producing a microchip is a complicated procedure with several stages. As
an implant technician, your work takes place near the end of the process.
Most of the machines in the clean room add a new layer to the silicon wafer.
Your job, however, is a little different.
Instead of adding layers to a wafer, you are changing the electrical properties
of certain areas on the wafer. You do this with the aid of a machine called
an ion implanter.
The ion implanter implants ions -- atoms that are missing an electron --
onto the wafer. It does this by hitting the silicon wafer with an ion beam.
Your job is to steer the beam, making sure it is at the correct height and
position. To do this, you actually need to accelerate or speed up the beam.
You accomplish this with the aid of a computer.
But helping make the microchips is only part of your job. You spend a large
portion of your day troubleshooting -- that is, testing the equipment
to search for possible problems. This is important because the equipment is
extremely delicate and expensive to operate. You need to discover a flaw or
weakness in the equipment before it breaks down.
For several days, you and the other technicians working on the ion implanter
have been getting disturbing data on the machine's ability to conduct
electricity. In technical terms, there has been a downward trend in the sheet
resistance.
You attend several meetings where, supervised by an engineer, you try to
decide how to tackle the problem. Should you shut the machine down and undergo
an extensive series of tests to find out what is causing the strange data?
Or should you continue operating the machine and hope that either the data
returns to normal or that the problem becomes clear through regular testing?
What do you do?