A Production Planning and Scheduling Model for Semiconductor Wafer Manufacturing Plants

In this paper, a comprehensive production planning and scheduling model is developed for a typical semiconductor plant (fab). The proposed model includes two decision making policies on production planning and scheduling of the semiconductor manufacturing systems, release and dispatching policies. The proposed release and dispatching policies decides on flow of wafer lots in the fab in order to achieve production management goals. The proposed model integrates two successful approaches, theory of constraint (TOC) (Goldratt, 2006) and workload control (WLC) (Land and Gaalman, 1996) to improve the performance of semiconductor manufacturing systems and also uses the concept of program evaluation and review technique (PERT) (Nicholas 2004) to estimate lots’ cycle time. A number of simulation experiments are conducted to prove the applicability and superiority of the proposed model on two excellent models in the literature in association with some performance indicators: on-time delivery, cycle time, and total lead-time.