A progressive strategy to achieving automated lot processing

To increase the efficiency of the semiconductor manufacturing process, the industry is striving to become more responsive to changing business conditions, thereby achieving lower throughput times, inventory levels, and labor costs. Towards this end, Intel has been pursuing a progressively layered roadmap to automate lot processing. By eliminating the manual steps to select, deliver, and process a lot, the efficiency of the semiconductor process can be greatly improved. Simulation studies have shown that fully automated lot processing provides compelling throughput, cycle time, and labor efficiency benefits. In this paper we describe the high-level strategy and implementation details on the effort towards fully automated lot processing at Intel's factories