To ensure a ready and low-cost supply of silicon wafers, the Department of Defense directed Texas Instruments to reduce wafer-production cycle times by 90 percent and, proportionately, the cost of building a wafer fab. Texas Instruments met these contract terms largely because it improved productivity and quality, lowered maintenance costs, and increased object reusability through the Cincom Smalltalk VisualWorks development environment.

Using VisualWorks, Texas Instruments designed a computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) system to control the wafer fab process. The resulting WORKS system is easily maintained and updated, is flexible and can be customized to meet specific customer needs, and has allowed TI to incorporate short cycle-time strategies into its manufacturing operations.