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When DeShawn Chapman visits a Best Buy or Circuit City and surveys the game consoles, cell phones, DVD players, digital cameras and laptops on display, he gets an immense sense of personal satisfaction. He knows with near certainty that chips he's helped to manufacture are embedded in each of those widely used consumer devices.
Chapman is director of technology and process control in the technology department of Qimonda (Munich, Germany). He does cutting-edge work at the company's Richmond, VA facility, and also travels several times a year to other manufacturing sites in Dresden, Germany, as well as China and Taiwan.
Opportunities galore
Chapman left a promising ten-year career at Motorola when he joined Qimonda (then Infineon) in 2004. He was interested in getting involved with a greater range of technology, and the company makes chips for a wide variety of applications. "It was a hard move, but there was a broader range of opportunities for success at Qimonda," he says.
Qimonda is a memory company that was carved out of Infineon Technologies AG in May 2006. It is among the largest DRAM companies in the world, one of the top suppliers of DRAM products for PC and server markets, and also a leader in both 300-mm manufacturing and 75mm DRAM trench technology.
Chapman's responsibility extends across Qimonda's 200mm and 300mm fabs in Richmond. "Within my department we have a failure analysis group, an integration group, a group responsible for defect reduction, and a group responsible for change management in the manufacturing process," he explains.
"When you look at the grand scheme of things, a hundred individuals are responsible for helping various organizations make sure we're producing top-quality IC chips."
The "meeting marathon"
Chapman says his typical day is a "meeting marathon." He's continually on the phone with colleagues in Germany and China and folks working at a joint venture in Taiwan.
Every morning Qimonda managers from around the world meet in a "line brief" teleconference to discuss the status of their manufacturing lines. English is the universal business language for Qimonda, but Chapman, who already has strong Spanish skills, is working to learn German.
Pre-wired for EE
Chapman was born in Brooklyn, NY but grew up mostly in North Carolina. He was the first in his family to go to college. "I was pre-wired to be an EE," he says. "I always had an interest in science and math. You hear childhood stories from engineers where they fixed stuff around the house, and I was no different."
He received his 1993 BSEE and his 1995 MSEE from North Carolina A&T State University. Then he started with Motorola in Austin, TX, attracted by the company's global outreach.
The Motorola decade
Chapman was brought into Motorola's rotational program, which moved him to a variety of engineering disciplines every few months for a year. He was a telecom design engineer, defining the layout of an IC chip; a device engineer for MOS3 semiconductors; a product engineer on a Motorola mobile telecom product; and an etch process engineer evaluating the feasibility of investing in costly new equipment.
Next he spent a year as an integrationist in Motorola's technology group, working on the individual steps in the chip manufacturing process. "Instead of one person trying to look at a hundred steps, you may have five taking twenty steps each. At a module level, they work with process engineers to understand the interactions," Chapman says. The job involved rolling out a design tool to help simulate the interaction of processes.
In 1997 Chapman settled in as an engineer in the EEPROM device characterization group. He was testing IC chips against company specs. "When they don't meet specification you have to understand why. Was it people or tool contamination? I like troubleshooting," Chapman says.
He moved to a similar job focusing on SRAM instead of EEPROM, and then became an SRAM/logic device engineer.
Into management
In 2000 Chapman joined the yield/module section, focusing on defect reduction. "Each wafer contains hundreds of IC chips, and as the wafer was processed we looked for potential issues related to contaminants. We worked feverishly to understand the issues!"
Chapman enjoyed being an individual contributor involved in the technical details of problem solving and research. But then the operations manager asked him to take charge of the group. It was his entrŽe into management.
He began with four techies, building up to a dozen. "I put together a diverse team, and found the work exciting and interesting," he says.
In 2004 he moved on to manage the yield-enhancement group in Chandler, AZ. "This was a bigger group with a big capital budget, but I was essentially responsible for the same type of thing," Chapman says.
The move to Qimonda
Qimonda attracted him for its variety of apps and opportunities, and also for its East Coast location, closer to his parents. "The company believes in work/ life balance, and I want to have time with my wife and two small girls, so this is important to me," Chapman says.
He moved up rapidly at the new company. First he was a section manager for wafer-yield analysis engineers in the technology group. "I was able to get in on the learning curve and make a contribution right away," he says.
In a year he became defect reduction section manager in the technology group. And in November 2005 he took over as director of technology and process control, his current position.
The challenge of each new day
Qimonda likes its people to volunteer, and Chapman enjoys supporting robotics competition in area high schools. He also assists with local science fairs, and works with his church in a kids' sports outreach ministry.
"I like to be involved and learn and explore," Chapman says. "I'm challenged each day by something new.
"Moving to different jobs satisfies me, and being a manager exposes me to different products, people and countries.
"Individuals with different backgrounds have different ways and methods to attack problems. It's interesting to understand how it all works together, and to bring everyone together to meet our common goals.
"At the end of the day, your choices depend on you as an individual and what you want to contribute. For me, having a broad experience is most important."
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