Keith Wells

Background

About Keith Wells

I recently started at Applied Materials where I have the chance to go back to my roots and work on inspection and metrology. I'm looking forward to connecting with customers I worked with for years at KLA. I spent 2.5 years at Lam Research. In the position of Chief Engineer, I was chartered to close key technology gaps and ensure faster execution to enable customer solutions through the integration of sensors, metrology, and algorithms. I worked on software, data science, and integrated metrology projects. I had a great time being the accountable executive for Lam India. It was a lot of fun and the culture and company was a great experience. I started with Tencor Instruments in 1990 as an applications engineer. Tencor was a privately held company developing instruments for the semiconductor industry in Mountain View, CA. In 1997 Tencor merged with KLA Instruments to form KLA-Tencor. Over the 27 years of employment at KLAC, I progressed up the ranks of the company to become a Senior Vice President and General Manager - in charge of the Optical Wafer Inspection Division - WIN Division. The WIN division was the largest division at KLA-Tencor with annual sales exceeding $500M. I received the company Growth award for record revenues in 2014. Previously, I was General Manager of two E-Beam divisions at K-T. During my time in this position I combined two separate E-Beam divisions into one, to leverage engineering synergies and reduce overall cost. My major accomplishment was the development and introduction of a new review platform that has resulted in significant market share gain. Prior to that, I spent 15 years in engineering or engineering management positions Specialties: Financial analysis of business performance and optimization to increase profitability. Setting the strategic direction of a business and defining new products and creating market introduction strategies. Motivating, leading, and setting strategy for organizations of >400 employees. Product development specialties include new product development - concept to shipment, team analysis, technical performance evaluation, and teaching engineering process to ensure success. I have done multiple product introductions involving software, optics, image processing, imaging sensors, stages, robotics, electronics: PCBs and Power, UHV, electron optics, and electron sources.