Every employee is responsible for ensuring the highest level of Quality in our products and services to achieve customer satisfaction and meet applicable requirements.
Continuous Improvement
Our Commitment
For more than thirty years, Wolfspeed has led the industry with top-of-the-line products for power applications. Quality management and compliance with industry and customer standards ensure we exceed customer expectations and deliver on the promise of Silicon Carbide.
Quality Policy - WIN with Quality
Every employee is responsible for ensuring the highest level of Quality in our products and services to achieve customer satisfaction and meet applicable requirements.
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Work transparently with our customers; listen, understand and exceed customer expectations.
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Innovate and continuously improve our products, processes, and services.
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Never compromise Quality by always living our values: Safety, Integrity & Respect, Ingenuity & Passion, and Ownership & Accountability
Our Values
We expect our employees and suppliers to maintain Wolfspeed’s corporate values. Quality is more than just ensuring a great product. We are committed to the highest standards of work and behavior and strive for proactive continuous improvements.
Customer First
Wolfspeed’s quality team is customer focused and works closely with our customers to understand their needs and expectations. We ensure business and manufacturing coordination to enable high-quality products that meet our customers’ requirements. Customer satisfaction and responsiveness are key measures of our success.
Product Standards
All our products must satisfy industry standards, our customers’ expectations, and our own. We test our products and simulate them in harsh environments to confirm their reliability. We follow, AEC, IATF, ISO9001, AS9100, and JEDEC standards. Wolfspeed has representation on key industry and technical committees to drive more specific Silicon Carbide requirements.
Quality Management System
Having descriptive policies for all our business and product processes is how we fulfill excellence through quality. Our team ensures that everywhere along the product lifecycle, there is coordination in all activities and tasks. A great quality management system allows us to be confident in our business practices and our manufacturing facilities. Additionally, our quality management philosophy fosters long-term improvements through customer satisfaction and feedback.
Quality Roles & Responsibilities
Manufacturing Quality
Develop, execute, and continuously improve the factory quality management systems. Scope includes the change management business process, nonconforming material management, incoming quality, product quality, and continuous improvement. Manufacturing quality teams are involved in developing FMEAs which define process control plans and the statistical process control system. Manufacturing quality teams also serve as a direct interface to the factories for customer quality engineers and business units.
Infrastructure Quality
Oversee the effectiveness of the overall Quality Management System (QMS). Responsibilities include administration of the enterprise-wide QMS software, coordination of the internal and certification audits, governance of quality documentation, leading product compliance program, and oversight of product change notification (PCN), end of life (EOL), production part approval process (PPAP), quality alert, and waiver request processes.
Supplier Quality
The Supplier Quality Engineering (SQE) Team is comprised of SQEs with backgrounds in Engineering, Semiconductor and SMT processes and Materials, with experience in Automotive, Telecommunications, and Aerospace industries. In coordination with our Supply Chain and Operations Engineering teams, the SQE strives to ensure that suppliers and contractor partners are capable and perform to customer requirements.
Customer Quality Engineers
Customer Quality Engineers (CQEs) are responsible for managing and continuously improving the quality in our Business Units. CQEs work together with the development group and production to reduce risk during each step of the process and makes sure the voice of the customer (or customers’ specification) is heard from concept to delivery to customer. CQEs work alongside Failure Analysis (FA) engineers, Regional Customer Quality Engineers (RCQEs), Field Application Engineers (FAEs), and internal stakeholders to address customers’ concerns promptly and use Failure Analysis results to create comprehensive diagnosis reports.
Regional Customer Quality Engineers
Regional Customer Quality Engineers (RCQEs) are responsible for driving alignment of customer and Wolfspeed quality requirements. They act as the primary quality representative for Regional (e.g. EMEA) customers, responsible for coordinating efforts within Wolfspeed to respond to customers’ quality inquiries and issues. They also support local Sales organization to facilitate new business opportunities.
Field Application Engineers
Field Application Engineers (FAEs) are customers’ go-to resources for integration, quality, maintenance, and routine check-ups. They are responsible for customer quality support, providing technical solutions for product implementations and working with engineers to resolve issues.
Failure Analysis
The Failure Analysis (FA) team conducts physical and electrical analysis relate to customer concerns. Failure Analysis engineers collaborate with cross-functional teams and propose preventative measures from discovered root cause.
Processes that Protect the Environment, Products that Improve it – Sustainability report
We strive to minimize resource use and reduce the environmental impact of our production process. We are committed to responsibly managing environmental impacts, including compliance with applicable environmental legislation, and to continuous improvement in our environmental performance. Our product sustainability goals are simple: enable our customers to invent power and wireless systems for a responsible, energy efficient future. We are committed to responsibly managing our products from cradle to grave as we lead the innovation and commercialization of silicon carbide.
Product Stewardship – Reportable Chemicals and Materials (RCM) process.
Wolfspeed’s Product Stewardship team (PST) maintains an active process intended to minimize restricted materials, such as lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd), in our products. This team addresses regulatory compliance of restricted and reportable substances on a worldwide basis. Chemicals, materials and components used during processing and that remain in finished Wolfspeed products must go through an internal approval process that includes supplier provided material content declarations, applicable 3rd party test reports & compliance statements as appropriate. The base data requirements for suppliers are found in the Supplier Regulatory Compliance Requirements document on the Supplier Resources website.
The Product Stewardship team compares the supplier data against Wolfspeed’s Reportable Chemicals and Materials List (RCM List) to determine compliance status. The RCM List summarizes restricted and reportable chemicals based on worldwide regulations, certain industry requirements, and mutually agreed upon customer requirements, each as they apply to electronics. The foundation of the RCM List is based on the IEC 62474 Database, IEC 62474 - Material Declaration for Products of and for the Electrotechnical Industry. This RCM List currently incorporates regulatory lists such as the EU RoHS, EU REACh and California Prop 65 lists as applicable to electronics, as well as industry lists such as the GADSL (Global Automotive Declarable Substance List) and the AD-DSL (Aerospace and Defense Declarable Substance List).
Test reports used to verify compliance status for the 10 European Union Restriction of Hazardous Substances (EU RoHS) plus other common substances of concern are also being maintained. Test data must come from an ISO 17025 certified test facility. All other restricted chemicals are verified through material declarations and/or compliance statements from suppliers.
The data obtained through the efforts described in the preceding paragraphs is used to create material content declarations (MCDs) and other statements (such as those applicable to RoHS and REACH status) for addressing customer and regulatory Product Stewardship requirements.
Visit the Product Ecology section of our Sustainability page on wolfspeed.com to view our REACH and RoHS declarations. Requests for MCD and other Product Stewardship queries are addressed through Customer Service. Proprietary or confidential substances or materials will not be disclosed in the material content reports.
Supplier & Contractor Management
Our risk-based selection process includes requirements for Quality Management System certification, on-site audits (Approved Supplier List (ASL) qualification, process readiness), and PPAP approvals as required. A comprehensive assessment of all ASL suppliers is conducted periodically to identify high-risk suppliers and associated action plans.
Minimum requirements for direct suppliers
ISO 9001 certified quality system
Critical automotive suppliers are required to be certified to IATF 16949
Rapid response to quality incidents with specific target to automotive and commercial
Supplied item/product specifications and requirements are formally communicated and agreed upon by our supplier and contractor partners. Change management is treated as critical and outlined in our Purchase Order (PO) terms, supplier quality agreements, and managed through our Supplier Process Change Notification (PCN) and internal Process Change Review Board (PCRB)processes. Strategic suppliers are reviewed regularly through scorecards summarizing their performance in the area of quality, on-time delivery, cost, and service.
New Product Introduction (NPI) & New Product Technology (NTI)
Wolfspeed utilizes a phase and gate process for progressing technologies from concept to certification and products from concept to qualification. Within each phase there are pre-defined deliverables, unified across all business units, that must be met to progress to a gate review. Upon completion of the gate review a pre-defined list of approvers must unanimously agree to allow a program to move forward to the next phase.
The phase & gate flow is designed to rigorously test and validate our product designs and manufacturing processes and ensure every product meets our rigorous quality and reliability standards and is highly manufacturable to ensure Wolfspeed can support every product’s volume ramp.
Product Change Notification (PCN)
Wolfspeed’s change management process evaluates the risks and benefits of changes to ensure the best continuity of supply for our customers. Change proposals are analyzed by the Product Change Review Board (PCRB). This board is comprised of a multidisciplinary team of experts who evaluates then classifies, approves or rejects the change request.
To meet its customer needs and expectations, Wolfspeed complies with the requirements for timely notification in JEDEC J‐STD‐046 latest edition.
The PCN policy also refers to the "Guideline for Customer Notifications of Product and /or Process Changes (PCN) of Electronic Components specified for Automotive Applications" (Rev. 4.0, December 2019) issued by ZVEI.
End of Life (EOL)
Before terminating a product, we evaluate the effects and potential alternatives to ensure customer supply.
An EOL PCN will be sent out to Wolfspeed's customers at least 6 months and 12 months before the last order date and the last ship date, respectively, of the affected products. The customers are urged to acknowledge receipt of the PCN and submit purchase orders as early as possible.
Wolfspeed complies with the latest version of J‐STD‐048 standard.
ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 Certificates
Click on the links below to view our ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 certificates.
We have opened the world’s largest Silicon Carbide fabrication facility in Marcy, New York. This brand new, state-of-the-art power wafer fab will be automotive-qualified and 200mm-capable. It is complemented by our materials factory expansion at our Durham, North Carolina headquarters, the building of the world’s largest materials manufacturing facility in Siler City, North Carolina, and the world’s most advanced Silicon Carbide device manufacturing facility in Germany.
