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Andrew Chase, President and CEO

Andrew Chase has participated in varying roles in the semiconductor industry since 1990. Starting his career at National Semiconductor after graduating from Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana, Chase began his career as a process troubleshooter. As a process control engineer, he was responsible for examining the large amounts of WIP (Work In Process) and electrical test (parametric and bin sort) data to verify, fingerprint, and identify circuit and part failures on the test floor and in the fab. He used his software development skills to write correlation programs in the RS1-based RPL program language and in SQL. Additionally, Chase learned deprocessing and circuit failure analysis in his efforts to remedy test failures.

Chase's software writing abilities were expanded as he volunteered to port the electrical test programs from one parametric tester to another tester that National was converting to; a newer process required newer test hardware and testing procedures. He was deeply involved with the complication of test program writing and code management. When Chase developed code, it was placed on the corporate intranet for download from the various other National sites. Additionally, lot and test setup information was automatically downloaded to the testers, reports were automatically created and sent to the corporate database, trend charts were drafted and moved to the corporate intranet site for immediate viewing. Chase mentions "This is when I figured out that data integration is what I did well, and what I enjoyed doing".

After six years with National, Andrew Chase went to Atmel Corporation to create a yield analysis software package for their yield enhancement engineers. Chase worked to create software that controlled testers and probers for engineering testing and bitmapping, and wafer handlers for automated bit analysis and observation. He created systems to store defect and yield data as it was created from the testers and inspectors and for recall in an easy to use, graphical user interface. "I learned hard-core programming, customer support, and product planning in a very compressed time frame", Chase reflects. Bringing a new innovative system into a site is a long and arduous process; as his product was being released to Atmel, Chase trained key users and went to pursue an opportunity he always wanted to try, marketing with KLA-Tencor.

At KLA-Tencor, Andrew Chase was exposed to a large variety of roles: technical support, applications engineering, marketing engineering, marketing management. "I was very technical yet could do marketing as well", Chase mentions, "this was unique fit at KLA-Tencor". Chase picked up skills that he couldn't learn as an engineer in a fab. He learned how to create a training class, introduce a product to the market, and talk to customers. When Chase realized a void existed for the most needed of utilities and KLA-Tencor did not show an interest, Chase founded Zenpire.

At Zenpire, Chase is using all of the information he has learned in all of his roles to create utilities and products which fill in the needs of today's semiconductor and flat panel engineers. "After talking to many of my friends in the industry, I have a good idea what the basics are for them to do their job better. If they do improve their productivity, I hope they realize that Zenpire's products did help them and buy us dinner with their bonus money."- Mr. Chase.