A Practical Estimation Method for the Lot Travel Distance for Evaluating Semiconductor Fabrication Layouts

초록

In this paper, a practical estimation method is developed for the lot travel distance inorder to evaluate semiconductor unified fabrication layouts using the absorbing Markovchain. The lot travel distance is defined as the total distance that a lot travels from the firstprocess to the last process; it can be used to investigate whether a fabrication layout designis reasonable. Furthermore, unified fabrication has not yet been introduced in the literature;it is a fabrication method that uses only one type of automated material handling system(AMHS). When designing semiconductor fabrication layouts, every aspect of all alternativesshould be investigated meticulously. The widely known and accepted methods, such as sophisticated simulations and mathematical modeling with high accuracy, require an extensive time period to build the model. However, in the early stages of the layout design, simple and insightful methods are required in order to investigate the numerous alternativesduring a short time period. This paper presents a simple estimation method for the traveldistance of a lot during its lifetime in a fabrication.

키워드