Development of virtual foundry fab based on distributed multi-agents

The keys to the success of a semiconductor foundry fab are based on order fulfilment and customer satisfaction. The main objective of order fulfilment is to deliver the products on time. However, many processes, including due-date setting, planning and scheduling of the order and real-time shop-floor operations, are involved in accomplishing this goal. In order to enhance the customer satisfaction, the foundry company should not only promise on-time delivery but also provide real-time information about orders. A virtual foundry fab can realise these two important issues, and is constructed based on distributed agents and a proposed event-driven platform. The core of the virtual foundry fab is the order fulfilment process. The process is triggered by the customers´ orders in the foundry fab environment and handled by the order management system. This paper focuses on the entire order fulfilment process. It includes the order management process, production planning, lot priority setting, tool capacity allocation, shop-floor operation and event monitoring processes. Each subsystem is established as an agent and performs its task on a distributed framework. The results show that the overall virtual foundry fab can be easily constructed using distributed multiple agents