A multi-purpose operational capacity and production planning tool

This paper presents a decision support system for operational production and capacity planning in a High-Mix/Low-Volume (HM/LV) 300 mm wafer fab. The decision support tool, combining projection, workload balancing and capacity smoothing modules, allows detailed plans to be computed in very short computational times. The special structure of the decision support tool and the reasonable precision of plans support a diversified utilization, ranging from the forecasting of bottleneck machines to the definition of realistic production plans. One of the main challenges is to define what information to provide in what form for each individual use case.