Medium-term multi-plant capacity planning problems for semiconductor foundry

The foundry is an industry whose demand varies rapidly and whose manufacturing process is quite complicated. This paper explores issues of mid-term capacity planning in the foundry. First of all, issues of capacity planning of the foundry are categorized. Secondly, focusing on the multi-site planning, an increment strategy for the number of the accessory tool—“photo mask” is proposed to increase the flexibility of production. The related decisions include how to appropriately allocate the forecast demands of products among multiple sites and decide the production quantities of products in each site after receiving the customer confirmed orders. By constructing the mathematical programming model of capacity planning, it is found that the rates of capacity utilization and customer order fulfillment are effectively enhanced by adding new masks to increase the production flexibility.