Reference

Mirror Routing Assistant

Implemented for ZEISS Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology

23 February 2023

Production process of mirrors in lithography optics

Adaptable and sustainable software for changing requirements

The Mirror Routing Assistant (MiRA) supports the production process of mirrors used in lithography optics from ZEISS in the manufacture of state-of-the-art computer chips. The software visualizes the complex measurement and analysis data of the mirrors in the various production stages. The user is kept up to date about the current quality status of such a mirror and can control its release workflow.

High precision optics in the semiconductor industry

ZEISS Digital Innovation tasks

ZEISS Digital Innovation is developing software that supports the manufacturing and evaluation process for an optical component in semiconductor manufacturing machines. This serves both the production of components of the latest technologies and the associated new processes. The redesigned application (MiRA) will provide the functionality of the software used to date and will be easily adaptable and expandable for future needs. The end user should be supported effectively and efficiently in the visualization of complex evaluation variables and the resulting interactions. Thus, in addition to the implementation of a future-proof technological basis, usability and the associated user-centered design of the UI also represent a focus of the project.

Since the processes supported by the ZEISS Digital Innovation application are just emerging, the solution is built on highly changing foundations that have not yet been established. The software should be able to be dynamically extended by external development teams on the front-end and back-end through plug-ins. The actual software remains untouched. There are no code changes and no intervention in the running application.

Through very close and intensive collaboration between the ZEISS Digital Innovation development teams and the stakeholders, an outstanding software solution was developed in a complex environment with many unknowns. Thanks to the agile and incremental approach, a first version was made available productively at a very early stage and new functions were added on a regular basis. Continuous attention was paid to the high quality of the software as well as the associated artifacts.

Thomas Krauss Module manager and architect MiRA GUI - ZEISS Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology Segment

Our Services

Planning and requirements management
Stakeholder coordination
Concept development and architecture design
Implementation of back end and front end
UI/UX-Design
Test automation
Quality assurance documentation
Lifecycle management
Support in the operation and ongoing development of the application

The high-end production processes developed at the ZEISS Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology segment generate a multitude of complex data. With its skills in the areas of visualization, user experience and web application development, our partner, ZEISS Digital Innovation, has contributed to preparing these complex structures for users by making them intuitively usable and navigable. When developing the MiRA UI, the agile, user-oriented and collaborative approach of our partner proved to be a great advantage.

Simon Rittmeyer Architect evaluation processes - ZEISS Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology

Project approach

This requirement presented a significant technological challenge. The project therefore started with a ZEISS Digital Innovation Team consisting of requirements engineers, UX designers, architects, developers and a Scrum Master. A second project team was added to the team in the summer of 2022. Both teams are working on different product families in the software. The planning and implementation of the entire project is agile, based on Scrum.

During the course of the project, new versions will be made available to users on a regular basis. The future users have access to the new versions of the software in the production and preview environment. Your feedback on this will be incorporated directly into our product backlog. The milestones are defined primarily by the product owner, who is provided by the customer, in consultation with the stakeholders and in collaboration with the development team.

The UI/UX team of the project consists of employees of the customer and ZEISS Digital Innovation. The customer is responsible for the UI fine design. Both ZEISS Digital Innovation and the customer benefit from the newly acquired knowledge, e.g. via the designated platforms within the departments.

Technical environment

Frontend: Angular 13, RxJs, Nx, Cypress (E2E-Test), Karma (Frontend Unittests), NgRx, ZUi WebComponents, paper.js, Syncfusion
Backend: C# / .NET 6, ASP.NET Core, REST, GraphQL,
Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Oracle, Liquibase, Azure DevOps
Areas RE/UX/UI: Azure DevOps, Axure RP, FIGMA, MS Office

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