E-manufacturing in the semiconductor industry

This paper presents a case study on how e-manufacturing is applied to enable preventive maintenance (PM) spacing. The PM schedules are generated by a mixed-integer programming-based optimizer, and the tool selection algorithm is applied for automated realtime dispatching. The fab automation systems visually display the solver results to technicians and control lot dispatching during low work-in-progress (WIP) situations. An advanced simulator-optimizer system has also been developed to test the e-manufacturing approach. It demonstrated ~20% in tool set availability (V
_A
) and ~30% in cycle time (CT) for a thin-film tool set