Pintail Enhances SwifTest to Support Inline QA and WECO Rules; New Features Optimize Quality Control on the Test Floor.

DALLAS -- Pintail Technologies, a breakthrough provider in semiconductor test improvement solutions, has enhanced its SwifTest(R) software platform with new quality assurance features that support Inline QA and real-time trend analysis using Western Electric Company (WECO) rules, making it the first company to offer these capabilities to the semiconductor industry for both probe and wafer test.

Pintail's Inline QA solution randomly selects a configurable number of passing devices and re-bins them to a specific QA bin automatically -- a vast improvement from the traditional "by hand" method -- resulting in a consistent sample size spread throughout the lot, providing a more uniform representation of the lot. Pintail's Inline QA enables better visibility and QA sampling across an entire lot. For multi-site testing, passing parts are selected from all sites, ensuring measurement of an adequate number of QA samples.

First introduced by Western Electric Company, WECO rules measure the quality of stable manufacturing processes while enhancing sensitivity to trends. Violation of WECO rules usually signals major production issues and requires immediate attention. Pintail's real-time trend analysis, following WECO guidelines, augments the powerful monitoring capabilities of Swiftest by immediately notifying test station operators and responsible engineers when WECO rules are violated.

"Pintail is proud to be the first company to offer real-time inline QA and WECO monitoring capabilities to the semiconductor industry for probe and wafer test without impacting the current test process," said Jeff Bibbee, CTO of Pintail Technologies. "Test operations, in particular, should benefit since they have typically been required to perform inline QA by stopping production to manually re-test parts, which hurts operational efficiency (OEE) and throughput. Pintail's real-time trend analysis can catch subtle quality problems and thereby reduce field DPM."

The WECO rules are now a standard feature included with Pintail's SwifTest-Monitor. Inline QA is available as a separately licensed module for SwifTest-Monitor. SwifTest-Monitor is progressively available for most popular ATE platforms including Agilent 93K, all Teradyne models, LTX fusion systems, etc. SwifTest has been utilized in production around the world in leading IDMs and test subcontractors for more than 18 months on millions of devices.

About Pintail Technologies

Pintail Technologies is a semiconductor test improvement company that provides breakthrough software to reduce the cost of test and increase production output and quality through existing test equipment and programs. Pintail has created the first test improvement solutions to combine real-time test process control capabilities with innovative analytical programs in an integrated software suite designed for speed and accuracy. In addition, Pintail solutions impact cost and quality of testing through advanced sampling and parts averaging. Fabless and integrated device manufacturers worldwide, in collaboration with leading assembly and test suppliers and ATE vendors, use Pintail tools to increase competitive advantage and hasten customer response. More information on the company and its solutions is available at www.pintail.com.