Opening: Who I am
I am interested in how seemingly unrelated systems work, and why they sometimes behave structurally in similar ways.
Present Day professional life
Currently I reside in Kumamoto, Japan working in TSMC Fab 23 (Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation). Right now I manage materials quality for about ten different suppliers for semiconductor specialty materials; specifically photoresist and sputtering metal targets.
Thought
I am genuinely interested in thinking patterns and thought processes and how these influence how we express ourselves towards other people. I enjoy connecting systems such as how culture in an organization feeds into the professional work ethic, which can ultimately affect quality in seemingly unexpected ways. My ideal type of problem to solve is one where I can string together multiple system domains to answer a question of why one material parameter or another failed.
Interests
My interests span from traditional classical music composition for symphonic orchestra to Japanese traditional calligraphy with ink brush to reading books on philosophy such as Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, to spending my own money to attend Semicon Japan last year in December to learn and connect with the rest of the semiconductor industry. All of these interests may appear to many people as to be separate interests and separate domains. However, how do individual parts interrelate to each other? I view every interest of mine necessary to train myself to be a better thinker and make better life-decisions.
What I learn from my interests.
For semiconductor manufacturing, if one looks at process integration, all processes interact with each other in one way or another, so this is training systems thinking and analysis as well as model based problem solving and causal reasoning (cause and effect).
From philosophy I learn many modes of thinking and ways of abstracting concrete concepts and ways of logic and what core values really mean and how collective culture is necessary for social cohesion. I have lots of more wonderful books I plan to read as I started reading philosophical books the middle of this year.
Ping pong and sports help me to make split second decisions. Being the deep thinker oftentimes, sometimes deep thinking is not always the best decision. Ping pong being a sport of reaction time being very crucial, things have to be done by intuition and feeling, not modeling of quadratic equations with velocity and acceleration.
Writing music without first having every note consciously planned develops my generative intuition and subconscious pattern recognition and emotional regulation and control.
Finally connecting all of these hobbies and activities makes me a more rounded person, and I am able to connect with so many wonderful people.
How I think
I tend to think across multiple levels of abstraction. Generalizing domain knowledge, digging deeply into it and extracting core concepts and interrelating different domains.
I enjoy moving from physical observable observations or specific concretely defined mental models. For example, a material defect may seem like it is coming from a machine, when it is actually coming from the raw material itself. No one would know unless multiple domains of knowledge are being connected. This material problem could be coming upstream from a manufacturing system and organization that has problems with its human decision making, organization behavior and attitude towards quality and reliability. Even possibly I would says that based on the collective culture, many people would say, once this material has left my hands; it is not my responsibility; I did what I could; versus others prioritizing the customer experience first.
A material is not simply a material, there are multiple levels of organization hierarchy, from solving the Schrodinger wave function in quantum mechanics, to atom to atom forces, to grain boundaries, to fluid dynamics when the metal melts. This is just one simplified example for illustrative purposes.
Likewise an orchestra is not just one sound all at once. It is a collective of people with an organization goal to deliver music to the audience. Here is a great structural analogy: Each member plays their own role (like different jobs in society), and they have the follow the musical score (the government), yet how they interpret it and the techniques they use to play the notes written on the musical score (thought process or personality). The musicians also have to coordinate with other musicians (friendships and community). Finally there is the composer who designs the music, and with different composers come different styles of music (different types of societies). I firmly believe that being in a classical symphonic orchestra teaches us how to live life if we think and analyze the situation well.
I tend to find similar structures in engineering, organizations, philosophy, and other complex systems.
This has led me towards integrative systems thinking approach, identifying common abstracted structural themes, feedback loops, and constraints.
Intuition and analysis may seem opposite and contrary to each other, however both are needed. Writing music requires intuition, and mathematics needs analysis. Yet often said is that there are subtle underlying structures and patterns beneath each genre of music that makes these genre recognizable. For me it is a mystery of how mechanical motion of the bow on a metal violin string generates sound waves, energy propagating through the molecules of the air, causing atoms to vibrate, delivered through space and time to the listener, who then interprets the sound which gets converted into electrical impulses in the brain and yet there is a pleasurable reaction from the listener. For me this is what makes music special. It is a merging of physics and psychiatry and art. Music is there one moment and disappears the next as the sound waves fail to vibrate the air molecules, and what is left are fuzzy memories of the original sound. For why certain intervals or rhythmic patterns are most pleasurable to the listener than others is something very interesting, and something I might never truly understand.
Engineering and Manufacturing
My professional foundation is materials science and semiconductor engineering knowledge.
I am especially interested in how supplier management, corporate culture, measurement systems, statistics, and personal judgement, as well as manufacturing systems and material behavior and inherent properties all interact with each other.
My engineering experience has taught me that many difficult problems can be caused by multiple variables and more often these problems arise from interactions between systems. Just because a material looks okay does not mean it is okay. This is the same for people. They may look and say one thing, but on the inside do another thing. This can be applied to supplier management as well. So there definitely needs to be insurance and trust that people will do what they promise to do.
There is a mindset of continuous improvement often in the semiconductor world as we have moved from 90nm to 45nm to 7nm to 2nm technologies and the processes have became more and more complicated. I will enjoy applying this attitude of continuous quality and manufacturing improvement to all my activities and hobbies I participate in.
Data is special. It is measured by instruments or machines that conduct basically the same measurement using the same set values and forces and settings. It allows us to bridge between intuition and evidence. To decide which material is better in a microscopic circuit during the semiconductor manufacturing process, solving the Schrödinger wavefunction equation or looking at structural mechanics of a larger material to determine which material in a microscopic circuit is going to work better will not be sufficient. Everything needs to be looked at the appropriate scale or method. The appropriate tools are needed for the job.
Music and Orchestral Thinking
Music has been part of my life since childhood.
I started going to classical music concerts under the age of 3 and would sit still through most of them without crying.
Violin practice and lessons began for me when I was 4 years of age and I became more serious when I was 8 years of age, and by 10 I was in the local Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. Something kept me returning to orchestra all these years, whether it was
Music and Orchestral Thinking
We started as a small interior design firm in downtown Michigan, aiming to help home buyers make do with the new space that they had acquired. It soon became obvious that it would make sense to help our clients see beyond the walls and floor plans and be there with them from the get-go. Currently, we offer house realtor, interior design, and architecture services in order to help our customers find their forever homes as seamlessly and painlessly as possible.
Music and Orchestral Thinking
We started as a small interior design firm in downtown Michigan, aiming to help home buyers make do with the new space that they had acquired. It soon became obvious that it would make sense to help our clients see beyond the walls and floor plans and be there with them from the get-go. Currently, we offer house realtor, interior design, and architecture services in order to help our customers find their forever homes as seamlessly and painlessly as possible.
Music and Orchestral Thinking
We started as a small interior design firm in downtown Michigan, aiming to help home buyers make do with the new space that they had acquired. It soon became obvious that it would make sense to help our clients see beyond the walls and floor plans and be there with them from the get-go. Currently, we offer house realtor, interior design, and architecture services in order to help our customers find their forever homes as seamlessly and painlessly as possible.
Our mission
We're on a mission to change the way the housing market works. Rather than offering one service or another, we want to combine as many and make our clients' lives easy and carefree. Our goal is to match our clients with the perfect properties that fit their tastes, needs, and budgets.
Our vision
We want to live in a world where people can buy homes that match their needs rather than having to find a compromise and settle on the second-best option. That's why we take a lot of time and care in getting to know our clients from the moment they reach out to us and ask for our help.
