Andrew Chase Founder
Mr. Chase has participated in varying roles in the semiconductor
industry since 1990. Starting to work at National Semiconductor
after graduating from Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana,
Mr. Chase began his career as a process troubleshooter. As a process
control engineer he was responsible for examining the large amounts
of WIP (Work In Process) and electrical test (parametric and bin
sort) data to verify, fingerprint, and identify circuit and part
failures on the test floor and in the fab. He used his software
creating abilities to write correlation programs in the RS1-based
RPL program language and in SQL. Additionally, Mr. Chase learned
deprocessing and circuit failure analysis in his efforts to remedy
test failures.
Mr. Chase's software writing abilities were expanded as he volunteered
to port the electrical test programs from one parametric tester
to another tester that National was converting to; a newer process
required newer test hardware and testing procedures. He was deeply
involved with the complication of test program writing and code
management. When Mr. Chase developed code, it was placed on the
corporate intranet for download from the various other National
sites. Additionally, lot and test setup information was automatically
downloaded to the testers, reports were automatically created and
sent to the corporate database, trend charts were drafted and moved
to the corporate intranet site for immediate viewing. Mr. Chase
mentions "This is when I figured out that data integration
is what I did well, and what I enjoyed doing".
After six years with National, Mr. Chase went to Atmel Corporation
to create a yield analysis software package for their yield enhancement
engineers. Mr. Chase worked to create software that controlled testers
and probers for engineering testing and bitmapping, and wafer handlers
for automated bit analysis and observation. He created systems to
store defect and yield data as it was created from the testers and
inspectors and for recall in an easy to use, graphical user interface.
"I learned hard-core programming, customer support, and product
planning in a very compressed time frame", Mr. Chase reflects.
Bringing a new innovative system into a site is a long and arduous
process; as his product was being released to Atmel, Mr. Chase trained
key users and went to pursue an opportunity he always wanted to
try, marketing with KLA-Tencor.
At KLA-Tencor, Mr. Chase was exposed to a large variety of roles:
technical support, applications engineering, marketing engineering,
marketing management. "I was very technical yet could do marketing
as well", Mr. Chase mentions, "this was unique fit at
KLA-Tencor". Mr. Chase picked up skills that he couldn't learn
as an engineer in a fab. He learned how to create a training class,
introduce a product to the market, and talk to customers. When Mr.
Chase realized a void exists for the most needed of utilities and
KLA-Tencor did not show an interest, Mr. Chase founded Zenpire.
At Zenpire, Mr. Chase is using all of the information he has
learned in all of his roles to create utilities and products which
fill in the needs of today's semiconductor and flat panel engineers.
"After talking to many of my friends in the industry, I have
a good idea what the basics are for them to do their job better.
If they do improve their productivity, I hope they realize that
Zenpire's products did help them and buy us dinner with their
bonus money."- Mr. Chase.
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