Investigation of minimum inventory variability scheduling policies in a large semiconductor manufacturing facility

This paper describes some problems and investigations encountered when implementing new resource scheduling policies in a large semiconductor manufacturing facility (FAB). The FAB described here uses a product release policy based on customer orders and a work-in-progress (WIP) chart. The scheduling of resource tools is done on a first in, first out (FIFO) basis on high speed tools and due date first (DDF) at bottleneck tools, except for high priority LOTS, called MAXIs. This presentation describes briefly the theory behind minimum inventory variability scheduling policies. A heuristic explanation of the minimum inventory variability for resource scheduling policies is given here. Finally a large semiconductor manufacturing facility is discussed in generic terms, including (sanitized) data collection. The results of the baseline output and historical data are compared to MIVSP.