Virtual production lines design for back-end semiconductor manufacturing systems

This paper introduces the virtual production line (VPL) concept, which initiates a new method to model the shop floor from both control and management point of view. Heuristic algorithms are presented to dynamically configure a large system into many VPLs, which ensure the line balance and efficiency, and accurately predicate the completion time for each work-order. The proposed methodology and algorithms are demonstrated through a simplified back-end semiconductor manufacturing system.