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CUSTOMER COMMITMENT COMMENDED
WITH SAMSUNG BEST ENGINEER HONOR
Applications Engineer Helps Optimize Puma 9000 Performance at Memory Production Line For HongSun So, being a successful senior product applications engineer at KLA-Tencor Korea involves more than technical expertise. Success is also driven by a deep understanding of the customer’s real problems. Assigned to work with the Samsung Electronics Semiconductor Memory Division on its Puma 9000 implementation, So has clearly made an impression. For his dedication, the Samsung MI group has honored So with its Samsung Best Engineer award. “Receiving Samsung’s award is an honor to the role of the applications engineer,” said So, a KLA-Tencor employee for the past five years. “And it means that I need to continue to work hard and do good work to keep this honor.” So considers as a key responsibility his efforts in helping Samsung speed their production ramps. When a tool encounters an issue, he’ll typically stand by long after a service engineer has resolved the problem, just to be sure performance is maintained. He’ll perform applications tests promptly, and he’s committed to writing the optimal recipes to help the customer monitor unique killer defects in production. For the most part, he considers himself to be a voice of the customer, gathering and delivering customer feedback to KLA-Tencor engineering and marketing teams to help enhance the tools.
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Spring 2006
Yield Management Solutions
“Every day, I meet or call Samsung to maintain our good communication flow as well as our relationship,” explained So. “When the customer successfully applies some of the Puma performancerelated tips I provide, they express their gratitude.” In the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2005, So received a KLA-Tencor General Manager Award for his “unequivocal devotion to work.” Exhibiting strong leadership within the local applications group, So has mentored and trained local applications engineers as well as customers, helping them make optimal use of their Puma 9000 tools. Prior to being assigned to Samsung, So was the owner of successful Puma evaluation projects for R&D at Hynix. There, he completed 10 layer evaluations within a three-week period—which was considered by the customer to be unprecedented. For the Samsung honor, So was chosen from a pool of 370 applications and customer service engineers from more than 20 vendors. Notes So, “Having ownership of one’s job and product is very important in the eyes of a customer. I always try to understand the customer’s situation and requests, and work hard alongside the customer to resolve any issues or develop ways to more effectively find unique defects.”