Batch Size Determination for Wafer Fabrication Using Genetic Algorithms

Processes of a real world manufacturer involve a number of batch-processing operations. Generally, these operations require the decision on batch sizes of products and there is no specific rule to set batch sizes of all products simultaneously so that the sum of the weighted expected cycle times of all products is minimized. The weights represent different levels of importance for products. In this study, we proposed an efficient genetic algorithm to determine the batch size combination that minimizes this sum. The proposed GA was tested on three different data sets, having number of products ranging from 7 to 12. The results show that, for some cases, the proposed GA is effective in locating the global optimum solutions.