Five Reasons to Retrofit Your Fleet of Power Supplies Today
Posted September 10, 2019 by Lauren Kennedy
You understand the daily struggles of operating aging power delivery equipment. Many products still in operation in fabs across the globe are discontinued or obsolete and each year they become harder to service and keep operating efficiently. That’s why it’s important to keep your equipment up-to-date and performing at its maximum potential– here are five reasons why you should consider upgrading your power delivery systems:
- Better Reliability: By upgrading to new equipment, you know you are getting the latest technology available, designed with increased quality and reliability in mind. Typically, older equipment has an annual failure rate of >15%, while newer equipment is closer to 2%. Decreasing that failure rate means you see greater tool uptime and reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCoO), saving money instantly just by upgrading.
- Greater Efficiency: Newer equipment is typically more efficient, which lowers your operating costs and gives you the potential to take advantage of programs incentivizing “green” initiatives.
- Enhanced Feature Set: An upgrade to new equipment provides you access to more features, better software and simpler interfaces. All these things aid in tuning your processes to see improved performance and higher yield. New equipment also has improved data logging capability allowing you to track trends and monitor your unit’s health over time.
- Improved Performance: Each new Advanced Energy product strives to offer improvements in accuracy and repeatability over its predecessor. A new product, therefore, can offer you fewer process interruptions, enhanced plasma stability and better overall consistency in your process.
- Continued Serviceability: While one solution to replacing an aging product may be sourcing used equipment, that equipment is often available on the market in an unknown condition and may provide more headaches than it is worth. The ability to continue repairing older units is limited due to obsolete components, and while third party repair organizations may seem like an attractive option for price and service availability, many of them do not use OEM-approved parts which can reduce your Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), causing your equipment to require repair more frequently. New equipment comes with a full warranty and offers guaranteed serviceability for years to come.
Lauren Kennedy
Advanced Energy
Lauren currently serves as the Product Marketing Specialist for Advanced Energy’s Global Services Department. She has a background in Electrical Engineering and spent two years in the Global Services engineering department. Prior to AE, she worked for 5 years in the industrial power industry.
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