Simulation experimental investigation on job release control in semiconductor wafer fabrication

This paper presents a new job release methodology, WIPLOAD Control, especially in semiconductor wafer fabrication environment. The performance of the proposed methodology is evaluated in a simulation study on a simplified wafer fabrication model, in comparison with other existing release control methodologies. A case study is also conducted by simulating a real-life wafer fabrication facility. Based on the experimental results, it appears that WIPLOAD Control is a reliable job release methodology, which can efficiently reduce average cycle time and standard deviation of cycle time for a given throughput level, especially with the increase of system congestion level and system variability caused by stochastic events such as machine unreliability or processing time variability.