Frequently Asked Questions

• What industries do you work with?

  We work with OEMs supplying complex capital equipment to highly regulated industries. These are primarily the semiconductor, print and pharmaceutical industries, where we have over 35 years of experience supporting complex, capital equipment. 

• What's the difference between tiers 0, 1 and 2?

  The tiers represent sequential stages of the installation and commissioning process, each building on the last.

  Tier 0 covers mechanical installation, getting the equipment safely into position and ready for power-on. This covers everything from offloading and uncrating through to electrical and pipework interconnection, laser alignment and assembly.

  Tier 1 covers system commissioning, bringing the equipment to life and validating its performance. This includes power-on and system alignments, pump down and helium leak checks, handling setup, beam tuning, safety radiation testing, marathon test and validation runs, and UV, intensity and beam qualification checks.

  Tier 2 is performance qualification, the final stage of qualification wafer runs and customer systems acceptance testing.

• How do I know which tier of support I need?

  Most OEM partnerships with IES involve Tier 0 and Tier 1, as these are the stages most commonly outsourced. Tier 2 is less frequently outsourced due to the IP considerations involved, though IES can support it if required.

  If you're unsure what level of support fits your situation, speak to one of our experts.

• How will the partnership be structured?

  We work to a clearly defined SLA that sets out the full scope of work and agreed timelines.

  The SLA also accounts for external factors outside anyone's control, so both parties have a clear, agreed-upon position if circumstances change. The goal is that there is no ambiguity. Your team and ours have a shared, documented understanding of what needs to happen and when.

• How do you protect our technical data and specifications?

  We understand that your technical documentation cannot be accessible to anyone outside those directly involved in the project.

  We have a strict data handling process to protect your IP and privacy. We use secure portals where your data, drawings and specifications are accessible only to the people directly involved in your project.

• How do you make sure your engineers are qualified to work on our equipment?

  We don't just hold general engineering certifications. We work with each OEM to ensure our engineers are trained to the same level as their own local engineers and certified to that specific standard.

  This means the people representing your brand on-site are fully capable of performing the work to your requirements, not just broadly qualified contractors.

• Can we scale support up or down as our needs change?

  Yes. You can easily ramp up resources when order volumes are high and scale back when demand softens, without the complexity of managing permanent headcount through the same cycle.

• Can you handle packing and crating as well as installation?

  Yes. Crate manufacture and export packing is available as an additional service alongside our core installation tiers.

  We can pack and crate equipment to your specification, ready for transport, and we already do this for a number of our OEM customers.

  Find out more about our crate manufacture and export packing service here.