Practical assessment 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 practical assessment of a combined dispatching policy presented in Gissrau and Rose (2012). Besides the facility performance influence, also the human factor is taken into consideration. This includes dispatch compliance parameter and staff surveys.