Shop floor control in the VLSI circuit manufacturing: a simulation approach and a case study

Abstract

This paper introduces a new approach to design and model shop floor control techniques for wafer fabs in the very large-scale integrated circuit manufacturing industry. The new model suggests the scheduling system should be selected by considering the type of work centres – whether they are sequential or batch – and the relevance of set-up times and capacity utilisation rate. The proposed scheduling model has been tested via a simulation model of the existing system, and by using data coming from the field, which leads to consider real-life performance to be close to the output of the simulation campaign. The main results point out that the performance of batch work centres – even though they represent a reduced portion of the whole set of work centres – can remarkably affect the performance of the whole fab. In addition, relevant improvements in term of throughput rate and capital productivity can be obtained also at the shop floor level via slack-based dispatching procedures. Results are particularly appealing because they can be implemented in a very short period and without significant infrastructural investments.

KEYWORDS:

• VLSI
• wafer fab
• simulation
• scheduling
• shop floor
• batch machines

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roberto Cigolini

Roberto Cigolini is a full professor of Supply Chain Management and of Production Management at the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano (Italy). His main research interests are primarily related to business planning and control, supply chain planning, collaborative forecasting, planning for circular economy and supply chain finance. He is the director of the Global Executive Master in Operations and Supply Chain Management at the MIP – Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business. He is visiting professor at the EADA Business School Barcelona (Spain) and at the Krannert School of Management (Purdue University – USA). He is also a member of the teaching body of the PhD programme in Management Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano and founding member of the Technical Committee on Semiconductor Factory Automation (IEEE Robotics and Automation Society).

Simone Franceschetto

Simone Franceschetto is a business consultant and an adjunct lecturer at the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in the field of Operations, Supply Chain and Quality Management. He is a business development manager at Struqture and an industrial consultant at Noverim, in the field of Industry 4.0, Innovation, R&D activities and Taxes. He has more than 10 years of professional experience in Product & Project Management, Marketing and Sales, Industrial Operations and Innovation in the consumer goods industry (Whirlpool, Haier). He is a Management Engineer with an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from MIP Graduate School of Business. He spent almost one year studying and living abroad with the Erasmus programme at the Warsaw University of Technology (Poland).

Andrea Sianesi

Andrea Sianesi is President of the Board of Fondazione Politecnico di Milano (former Dean and President of the board of MIP Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business). Full professor of Supply Chain Management at the Politecnico di Milano Born in Milan in November 1961, he attained an MSc in Management Engineering with honours at the Politecnico di Milano in 1985. Assistant Professor at the Politecnico di Milano since 1990, Associate Professor since 1998 and Full Professor since 2000 (at LIUC University from 2000 to 2003, at the Politecnico di Milano since 2003). Current teaching assignments at the Politecnico di Milano: ‘Gestione dei sistemi logistici e produttivi’ (Fundamentals of Operations and Logistics Management) for the BSc in Management Engineering, ‘Supply Chain Management’ for the MSc in Management Engineering, MBA, Executive MBA and Executive education programmes. Visiting or Contract Professor at Bocconi University, Università degli studi di Brescia, TongJi University (China, 2009, 2012 and 2013), Wuhan University (China, 2009, 2012), Xi’an Jiaotong (China, 2019), HSE StPetersburg (Russia, 2019). Director of the ‘Istituto di Tecnologie’ at LIUC University during the period 2000-2002. Member of the management board of MIP (Graduate School of Business) – Politecnico di Milano since 2002. Director of the International MBA Programme at MIP Graduate School of Business from 2003 to 2004. Director of the Executive MBA Programmes from 2004 to 2013 at MIP Graduate School of Business. Associate Dean at MIP Graduate School of Business – Politecnico di Milano since 2009. Deputy Director for Internationalization and Faculty Development at the School of Management – Politecnico di Milano since 2013. Dean and President of the Board of MIP Politecnico di Milano from 2015 to Dec. 2019. President of Fondazione (Foundation) Politecnico di Milano since Jan 2020. He was the Chairman of the executive board of ACE, Alliance of Chinese and European Business Schools, during the period 2016-2018. He has been a member of the managing committee of ASFOR, the Italian association for management education, and of AIDI (the Italian Association of Professors in Industrial Systems Engineering). He is a member of the International Advisory Committee of Beijing Jiaotong School of Management and Xi’an Jiaotong School of Management in China and of ESSCA Business School (France), EADA (Spain), and of the SEB of Ljubljana University (Slovenia) in Europe. He is a member of the management board of ANIMP (the Italian Association of Industrial Plant Engineering). At Politecnico di Milano he’s member of the board of directors of PoliHUB (startups’ incubator and acceleterator) and Poliedra. He is a member of the board of directors (independent director) of two medium-sized Italian multinational companies in the machinery industry. He is also the author of six books (in Italian) and more than 120 scientific papers for international.