Development and introduction of a combined dispatching policy at a high-mix low-volume ASIC facility

The fabrication of semiconductor devices, even in the area of customer oriented business, is one of the most complex production tasks in the world. A typical wafer production process consists of several hundred steps with numerous resources including equipment and operating staff. A reasonable assignment of each resource at each time for a certain number of wafers is vital for an efficient production process. Several requirements defined by the customers and facility management must be taken into consideration with the objective to find the best trade-off between the different needs. In this paper we describe the development of a combined dispatching policy allowing the company to set up multiple objectives and generating the best compromise between different requirements. The rule is applied at a typical ASIC facility with a low-volume high-mix characteristic.