SANTA CLARA: VLSI Research Inc. has announced the winners of the 2008 Overall 10 BEST Customer Satisfaction Awards for Focused Suppliers of Chip Making Equipment and Large Suppliers of Chip Making Equipment. Keithley Instruments and Varian Semiconductor are crowned champions this year in their respective categories, with both companies earning an overall rating of at least 8.0.

The results are based on 4,565 surveys collected from chip makers that represent more than 95 percent of worldwide chip production. Each equipment supplier was rated on thirteen different categories which encompass equipment performance as well as customer service.

These overall 10 BEST lists are based on all the semiconductor capital equipment each company manufactures. Assembly, Material Handling, Process Diagnostics, Test, and Wafer Processing equipment ratings are all grouped together for each company and an overall score is determined.

Focused suppliers of chip making equipment
Keithley Instruments, this year's winner among the Focused Suppliers of Chip Making Equipment, received the top scores in seven different categories, with its best result in equipment uptime.

Second place Hamamatsu Photonics was the winner in usable throughput and quality of results, while third place SEN Corp. captured the best results in process support and spares support. Inovys Corp. grabbed the highest ratings in cost of ownership and software. Last year's winner, Orthodyne, took fifth place with an overall rating of 8.08.

In what is traditionally a very competitive group, this year's 10 BEST Focused Suppliers averaged above 8.0 in eight different categories. Customers rated software the lowest on average, followed by cost of ownership, process support, and spares support.

Compared to last year, Focused Suppliers improved most in technical leadership. This category increased 0.55 points and has gone from being the second-lowest to second-highest rated category.

Large suppliers of chip making equipment
Varian, the winner of Large Suppliers of Chip Making Equipment for the third year in a row, earned the highest rating in 10 of the 13  categories. Novellus followed, capturing the top spot in cost of ownership.

Third place Advantest was best in equipment uptime, while ASML obtained the best score in technical leadership. ASM International rounded out the top five.

Once again, the overall 10 BEST Large Suppliers of Chip Making Equipment were outperformed by the Focused Suppliers.

Large Suppliers scored lower in every category, with no category receiving an average rating above 8.0. This is no surprise, as customers tend to have higher expectations for large suppliers and thus rate them tougher.

The strengths of these suppliers are equipment uptime, quality of results, and usable throughput, while cost of ownership, software, and process support had the lowest average ratings.