This paper presents a new job release methodology, WIPLOAD Control, especially in semiconductor wafer fabrication environment. The performance of the proposed methodology is evaluated in a simulation study on a simplified wafer fabrication model, in comparison with other existing release control methodologies. A case study is also conducted by simulating a real-life wafer fabrication facility. Based on the experimental results, it appears that WIPLOAD Control is a reliable job release methodology, which can efficiently reduce average cycle time and standard deviation of cycle time for a given throughput level, especially with the increase of system congestion level and system variability caused by stochastic events such as machine unreliability or processing time variability.
Chao Qi, Appa Iyer Sivakumar, Stanley B. Gershwin