The use of systematic, company wide process control techniques in integrated circuit manufacturing factories (known as wafer fabs) have been low since the inception of the industry in the 1960s. Reasons for this low implementation of process control methods have included both technical and cultural barriers to implementation. The technical barriers that have hampered process control implementation in wafer fabs originated from both the unique nature of IC fabrication processing and the rapidly changing equipment sets needed to build ever advanced technology node integrated circuits. These technical barriers included the simultaneous continuous flow and discrete event nature of most processes, the high number of equipment types/processes in an IC product flow, the significant changes in required process output from run to run, and the lack of computing power to handle a large diversified data stream. In recent years these technical barriers been reduced to the point that the size of the cultural barriers have become obvious as the major obstacle to successful systematic implementation. These cultural barriers originated in early wafer fabs whose technical population was strongly focused on device characteristics rather than process stability, whose reward and recognition system was based on local problem solutions rather than systematic solutions, and whose manufacturing methods were created locally rather than through company wide standardization. Over the last fifteen years Texas Instruments has achieved some success in overcoming first the technical barriers and then the cultural barriers for systematic implementation of advanced process control techniques in all TI world wide wafer fabs. This presentation will highlight the necessary technical changes that were put in place, and a key set of cultural changes that were implemented, to gain the benefits of systematic process control in a world wide manufacturing environment.