ENABLING ENVIRONMENTS WHERE INNOVATION THRIVES
Edwards supports customers’ Total Cost of Ownership by factoring in not only output efficiency, but also machine life, service regime and environmental aspects.
Semiconductor manufacturing costs can be greatly impacted by three factors: The equipment investment in terms of quality and reliability, the overall operational approach and the service regime employed for the vacuum and abatement equipment fleet.
A lack of focus in one area can increase operational costs, as well as impacting investments on capital equipment.
4 ways to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership of Fab operations
- Review your vacuum and abatement service maturity to understand the impact of your current approach and review opportunities to optimise your operations and Total Cost of Ownership.
- Make sure existing equipment is running to the optimal performance to maximise your investment.
- Consider remanufacturing as an alternative to new equipment purchases, to minimise costs and lead times, and reduce your environmental footprint.
- Move from a capital expenditure model to ‘vacuum as a service’ model, to replace heavy capital expenditure with a predictable operational or leasing cost.
Service Solutions to reduce your Total Cost of Ownership
- Remanufacturing
- Upgrades
- Core Service Plans
- Advanced Service Plans
Remanufacturing
Our remanufacturing solutions offer a unique opportunity to reduce your Total Cost of Ownership by lowering the initial equipment investment. Edwards remanufactured products are restored to factory specifications, increasing the machine lifetime, and delaying the need for replacement. In addition, a reduction in operational costs can be seen immediately owing to a refresh in efficiency of old or rundown equipment.
Upgrades
Edwards has developed a range of upgrades to increase meantime between service and machine efficiency, lowering your operational costs
Core Service Plans
Planned maintenance can have a significant impact on your operational costs. Regular maintenance can increase the lifetime of the equipment with less risks of frequent replacements. It can also keep your equipment fleet at the highest cost efficiency by avoiding unnecessary repairs from unexpected down events and additional wear and tear caused by run -to- fail maintenance regimes.
Advanced Service Plans
Our Risk Management solutions can have a significant impact on your Total Cost of ownership targets. Our predictive maintenance model will reduce the risks and uncertainty related to machine down events that can lead to wafer scraps. Edwards Risk Management plans include a pay-per-usage option which allows customers to save or invest capital expenditure elsewhere. Operational costs are also predictable for more efficient budgeting.
Customer Success
WANT MORE VALUE FROM YOUR VACUUM & ABATEMENT SYSTEM?
Use this online calculator to reveal your value estimation
Input the number of vacuum and equipment unplanned events (crashes) per year into this online value calculator to see how much additional value you can reclaim from improved chamber availability, reduced scrap value, and maintenance costs.
Get an immediate estimate by inputting the typical down events causing wafer scraps
Reveal the additional throughput potential
Download and share this value estimation with your team
FAQs
Common questions about service at Edwards
Read the answers to some of the most popular questions other customers have had.
Understanding TCoO
What does “Total Cost of Ownership (TCoO)” mean for vacuum and abatement in a semiconductor fab?
TCoO is the full lifetime cost of owning and operating your vacuum and abatement fleet, beyond just the purchase and service price. It includes utilities, planned and unplanned maintenance, spare parts, unplanned downtime costs, tool and wafer recovery, lost wafer throughput, maintenance strategy, and end-of-life decisions. Edwards’ approach also considers machine life, service regime, output efficiency and environmental aspects.
What are the biggest drivers of TCoO in vacuum and abatement systems?
In practice, the largest drivers are the direct costs of maintenance and utilities, the indirect costs of extended or unplanned downtime and associated lost wafer throughput, and the direct costs of tool and wafer recovery. Gaps in managing any one area increase operating costs and can also affect capital investment decisions.
How should we measure Total Cost of Ownership (TCoO), per tool, per process, or per fab?
A useful TCoO model works at three levels: per tool (chamber availability and wafer scrap risk), per process (utilities and by-product load), and fab-wide (maturity of service/maintenance strategy and operations, standardisation, and equipment lifecycle strategy). This mirrors how vacuum and abatement performance impacts both the SubFab and the cleanroom.
What is the fastest way to estimate the value of reducing downtime and unplanned events?
Start by quantifying how many unplanned vacuum or abatement down-events you have per year, especially those causing wafer scrap. Then translate that into recoverable chamber availability, increased wafer throughput, and maintenance cost. Edwards provides an online value calculator designed for this type of estimate.
Downtime, yield risk, and operational stability
Why does vacuum and abatement performance have such a large impact on tool uptime?
Vacuum and abatement are essential utilities for many process steps. When they become unstable (temperature, pressure control, by-product handling, corrosion/particle issues), they drive unplanned downtime and can increase wafer scrap risk. Both of which dominate TCoO far more than incremental equipment and service price.
What typically causes unplanned vacuum events in semiconductor manufacturing?
Common causes include process by-product deposition or, corrosion in harsh processes, inadequate purge/thermal management, component usage beyond best practice service intervals, and insufficient monitoring that allow small deviations to become failures. Deploying a proactive, condition-based service approach and targeted upgrades is usually the quickest way to reduce repeated unplanned events and improve wafer throughput.
How do we reduce downtime without over-maintaining the fleet?
The goal is service maturity: standardised routines, risk-based intervals, and data-led condition-based maintenance interventions, so you reduce unplanned events without wasting labour or replacing parts early. Edwards explicitly recommends reviewing vacuum and abatement service maturity as a first step to optimise operations and TCoO.
The goal is to improve service maturity, meaning the progression from a reactive "break-fix" approach to a more sophisticated maintenance programme. As service maturity increases, organisations adopt a balanced combination of standardised work practices, risk-based maintenance intervals, condition-based monitoring, predictive maintenance techniques and operational excellence disciplines. This enables maintenance to be performed when it is needed, reducing unplanned downtime while avoiding unnecessary labour and premature parts replacement.
Edwards recommends assessing the maturity of your maintenance programme as a first step towards improving equipment performance, reducing unplanned downtime and lowering Total Cost of Ownership (TCOO).
How do upgrades help lower TCoO if the pumps are already installed?
Upgrades can extend time between services, lower utilities consumption, improve robustness in harsh duties, and reduce contamination risks. Any one of these delivers TCoO gains without the lead time and disruption of full replacement. Edwards positions upgrades as a route to improve performance, reduce cost of ownership, and support sustainability goals.
Energy, utilities and environmental costs
How much do vacuum and abatement contribute to fab energy costs?
Vacuum and abatement can represent a material share of semiconductor energy consumption; industry commentary notes vacuum pumps alone can be as much as ~20% of total fab energy consumption, and abatement adds further load depending on process mix and abatement type.
What utility costs should be included in a TCoO model for vacuum and abatement?
Include electricity, cooling water, and (where applicable) fuel gas and purge gases. In many fabs, vacuum/abatement utilities are significant enough that optimising operating modes and system integration can deliver measurable annual savings.
Total Cost of Ownership and service strategy
What are the practical steps to reduce TCoO across an existing installed base?
We highlight 4 practical levers: (1) review service maturity and moving to a condition-based maintenance strategy, (2) ensure existing equipment runs at optimal performance, (3) consider remanufacturing as an alternative to new purchases, and (4) consider “vacuum as a service” as a capital-efficient way to replace older equipment with more efficient models.
How do service plans reduce TCoO and what changes compared with reactive maintenance?
A structured service plan reduces budget variability. It can mean fewer unplanned events, better parts planning, faster response pathways, and standardised maintenance quality. Edwards’ semiconductor services emphasise uptime, wafer throughput, safety and cost control as key outcomes shaped by our service portfolio.
What is “service maturity” for vacuum and abatement fleets?
Service maturity is a measure of how consistently your site applies best practice across the fleet: standards, optimizing maintenance scheduling using condition-based techniques to align with tool maintenance, spares strategy, operational excellence disciplines and procedures, or data-led driven predictive maintenance (PdM). Performance is improved. We explicitly recommend evaluating service maturity to identify opportunities to optimise operations and TCoO.
What is “vacuum as a service” and when is it worth considering?
Vacuum as a service replaces large upfront capital expenditure with a more predictable operating or leasing cost model, often attractive when you want to reduce budget volatility, simplify lifecycle decisions, reduce capital expenditure or scale capacity with fewer internal constraints. For us, vacuum as a service is one of the four routes to reduce fab TCoO.
How do we decide whether to invest in new equipment, upgrade, or remanufacture?
Use a simple decision tree: if performance is fundamentally insufficient, replace; if reliability or by-product handling is limiting, upgrade; if equipment is sound but worn or inefficient, remanufacture. Edwards positions upgrades and remanufacturing as complementary ways to reduce cost of ownership and extend useful life.
How do we build a business case for TCoO improvements?
Link each action to one of three value buckets: (1) more chamber availability, (2) less scrap/rework, (3) lower maintenance and utilities. Edwards’ value calculator framing aligns to downtime events, scrap, and maintenance costs.