Product Change Notification

In compliance with J-STD-046, Calterah issues PCNs to notify customers of major changes that affect the form, fit or function, or the quality or reliability of a product within 90 days ahead of the official implementation.

A PCN includes:

• PCN tracking number
• Calterah contact information
• Information of the affected product
• Detailed description
• Reason for change
• Anticipated impact
• Verification plan and results
• Sample availability date
• Projected production shipment date

For notifications of product changes to automotive-grade devices, Calterah complies with AEC-Q100 Rev-H and is working out a process following the relevant guidelines by ZVEI. 

Product discontinuance

Calterah’s product discontinuance process complies with J-STD-048. After a PCN with regard to product discontinuance is officially issued, our schedule allows 12 months for the last order to take final delivery of obsolete products.

Supplier Quality Support

To deliver quality products and services to customers, Calterah as a fabless relies on the vital support from major suppliers such as foundries and packaging and testing factories.

We have a supplier quality team at Manufacturing Technology Center to drive our suppliers to proactively work towards our technical requirements and quality expectations. Calterah urges all suppliers to make systematic and ongoing improvement to their products and processes, in a bid to build a stable, efficient and reliable supply chain.

Minimum Requirements for Suppliers

• ISO 9001 Quality Systems Certification
• IATF 16949 Certification (applicable to automotive-grade chip manufacturing)
• Experience in mass production of similar products
• Compliance with Calterah’s requirements
• Change management in compliance with Calterah’s requirements
• Effective management of sub-suppliers
• Quick response to customer complaints
• Continuous improvement

Minimum Requirements for Critical Sub-Suppliers (of critical raw materials)

• ISO 9001 Quality Systems Certification
• IATF 16949 Certification (applicable to automotive-grade chip manufacturing)
• Compliance with Calterah’s requirements

Tools for Supplier Quality Management

• Quality agreement
• Supplier introduction audit
• Manufacturing data monitoring
• Monthly/Quarterly supplier performance management
• Annual supplier quality system audit and on-site audits

Continuous Improvement

The notion of continuous improvement has always been part of Calterah all along its development. Pursing excellence in products and services and improving continuously remain Calterah’s commitment to customers. By adopting the PDCA method, Calterah joins hands with its suppliers to exercise its dedication to continuously offering better products and services.

Continuous Improvement Process Tools employed by Calterah and its suppliers:

• Project experience knowledge base
• Internal audit
• Management review
• Customer audit
• Third-party audit
• Supplier performance management
• Supplier yearly audit

Failure Analysis

Calterah’s IC Failure Analysis (FA) process aims to identify the root cause of a device failure by electrical and physical means, so as to ensure the smooth transition to the mass production of a new product and continuously improve its functions and quality.

Calterah not only boasts an experienced product engineering team, but also works closely with top third-party labs to perform efficient and accurate FA.

FA Process

1. Background Information Collection

Once a faulty device is returned to Calterah, our product engineers will first confirm the failure with the customer-end or application-end, and then try to reproduce the failure and do some preparation like solder ball repair for further FA.

In this step, we collect the following information:

• When and at which manufacturing procedure the failure was observed; quantity of the affected devices and lot information
• Description of the failure or malfunction
• Onsite inspection record of the failing device, such as pictures of the appearance and X-Ray images

2. Electrical Verification

In this step, we will identify and locate the failing component through electrical methods, including ATE and I/V Curve measurement.

3. Non-Destructive Failure Mechanism

Once the failing component is located, non-destructive analysis will be conducted to determine whether or not there is a defect in the device package area covering the component, using X-ray, SAT (Scanning Acoustic Tomography), OM (Optical Microscopy), etc.

4. Destructive Failure Mechanism

If there is no defect in the package, we remove the device package to expose the silicon die for further analysis.

Several techniques are involved in the step. We stimulate the die with signals through the IO pads to detect the defective signals in the die. Once a defective signal has been found, a common technique used is to remove the package layers of the defective area, and probe under an electron microscope or do an elemental analysis to determine the physical defects.

5. FA Report

In the final step, we develop an improvement plan based on the FA results, so as to avoid latent failures of future products.