While industrial supplier Edwards Vacuum only opened its 75,000-square-foot Hillsboro facility in 2019, it's already making huge inroads at the site.
Edwards unveiled opened a new innovation lab at the spot, which is the British company’s North American semiconductor headquarters. The lab allows the company to help customers solve problems that arise from changing materials and the complex manufacturing process for semiconductors.
The idea is if the company can work closely with customers, experts from both teams can create solutions faster and get those innovations into production.
Edwards makes vacuum products and advanced exhaust systems used in semiconductor manufacturing. While the company won't name customers, the lab and the segment HQ doesn't sit far from Intel Corp.’s massive Ronler Acres manufacturing facility. Ronler Acres is Intel’s base for manufacturing research and development for its cutting edge chips.
“Almost everything that goes through the process chamber comes out through our equipment. Mishandling those materials or allowing the wrong ones to mix can exact significant penalties, in downtime, product loss, and health and safety risks to fab personnel,” said Kurtis Fairley, Innovation Center Manager in a written statement.
“Evaluating the impact of every new process or chemical on downstream equipment is absolutely essential. The new lab allows customers to explore these issues and develop solutions in collaboration with our experts right in their own backyard: global expertise, locally applied.”
Edwards North America’s business continues to grow: The company is hiring across functions.
The Hillsboro site allowed the company to consolidate employees from three nearby locations. The company has 323 employees based in Hillsboro. It also moved manufacturing from Buffalo, New York, to Oregon.
Semiconductor equipment maker opens new Hillsboro division
British equipment maker Edwards Vacuum has its North American Semiconductor Division headquartered in Hillsboro. The company makes vacuum pumps and advanced exhaust systems used in semiconductor manufacturing. The 75,000-square-foot facility can hold 250 employees. Previously, the company had employees in three different locations in Hillsboro. The new facility consolidates operations. It also moved manufacturing from Buffalo, N.Y., to Hillsboro.
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Edwards Vacuum's new Hillsboro facility includes a large training room to teach equipment maintenance and troubleshooting.
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Michael Brown, training center manager for Edwards Vacuum, shows off part of the company's new training facility at its expanded Hillsboro site. The training facility includes products set up as they would be seen within a customer facility. Here, employees can train on maintenance and troubleshooting an abatement system used by semiconductor customers to remove small particulate during the manufacturing process.
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Gregory Le Mon, project engineer at Edwards Vacuum, highlights some of the innovations the team has created as a result of working closely with customers. Here, he notes at a customer’s request the team was able to mount a piece of equipment on cushions of air in order to absorb the pump vibrations. The fix was needed because the customer required the pump be placed next to vibration-sensitive equipment. The new Hillsboro facility is designed to allow more of these collaborations with customers creating innovative solutions to challenges. Also shown to the left of Le Mon, is an innovation created to make troubleshooting problems quicker. The company devised a way to easily remove the guts of one of its abatement machines so that a new system can easily be popped in while the problem parts are worked on. By creating these module and mobile parts, the down time of the machine is cut from an entire shift to a couple of hours.
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The new Edwards Vacuum facility allows the company to work closely with customers and create rapid prototypes, such as some of the pieces seen here, to help solve problems.
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The new Edwards Vacuum facility in Hillsboro also contains a thermal lab where employees work on the company's Temperature Management System products. These products deal with condensation issues that are created from the gasses used in semiconductor manufacturing. Shown is the company's solution for dealing with elbows in pipes. The company created a flexible insulation jacket and drew inspiration from the textile industry. The latches for the system were also inspired by clothing, this time, a belt.
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Chris Sedlmeyer, quality assurance manager at Edwards Vacuum, explains the assembly process for pump frames at the company's Hillsboro facility. As a frame moves down the line water and nitrogen lines are added and checked, exhaust and electrical is added. Everything is checked at each station along the line and ends with software and firmware checks. The company has 25 people working the line per shift. It takes one day for a frame to go from start to finish. The pumps are shipped directly to the customer and the final assembly with the pump happens on site. Every fab customer has up to 50 Edwards staff on site for installation.
Cathy Cheney|©Portland Business Journal
