A robust production control policy for VLSI wafer fabrication

The authors present control policy for shop-level scheduling in a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility. The policy is designed to reduce the work in process in the shop floor and to follow the production plan as closely as possible. It is also robust against random interference such as machine breakdowns. The flow rate control policy is compared with two other approaches using event-driven simulation. Simulation results are presented to show the advantages of the proposed approach.>