Integrated facility layout and material handling system design in semiconductor fabrication facilities

Semiconductor manufacturing is an important component of the U.S. manufacturing industry. Most of today´s fabrication facilities and those being designed for the near future use a bay layout configuration and an overhead monorail system for moving material between bays. These material handling systems are usually designed with a spine or perimeter type of configuration. This paper investigates the layout and material handling system design integration problem in semiconductor fabrication facilities and proposes a methodology for solving this integrated design problem. A spacefilling curve approach is used to address the facility layout, while the structure of the spine and perimeter configurations are exploited to create a network flow problem to determine the material handling system design. Computational results are presented and show exceptional promise for this procedure in solving the integrated design problem in a semiconductor manufacturing environment