A scheduling system for IC packaging industry using STEP enabling technology

The packaging technologies of electronic elements have matured in supporting the development of electronic products, which tend to get smaller in size with higher capacity and resolution, In order to increase packaging quality and reliability as well as to reduce the packaging cycle time, not only advanced packaging processes and techniques but also efficient production management methods need to be developed. Among production management, scheduling is one of the most important tasks to ensure the performance of competitive manufacturing capability, This research develops a computer-aided scheduling system (CASS) for integrated circuit (IC) packaging industry. The standard for the exchange of product model data (STEP) enabling technology is adopted to model and implement the system. The effort aims to achieve integration of engineering applications by standardizing the modeling and the use of product data. This paper uses IDEF0 to model the IC packaging scheduling process and EXPRESS language to define the data models. The IC packaging scheduling system is implemented in an integrated environment using the object-oriented language (C++) and an object-oriented database. The ST-Developer is used as the kernel to interface the application language, the database, and the EXPRESS data models. The architecture of this integrated implementation environment is not only effective for scheduling task but also useful in general applications for product design, analysis, and production planning.