A Feasible Case Study of Applying Critical Chain Multi-Project Management in Semiconductor Turnkey Services

摘要

We present a semiconductor supply chain model constructed under the concept of Theory Of Constraints (TOC) [1] as well as Critical Chain Multi-Project Management [2] to monitor and control FABLESS's manufacturing orders throughout the entire supply chain. The objective of Critical Chain Multi-Project Management is to assure that projects can be delivered on time. However,whether Critical Chain Multi-Project Management is applicable for the assuring that orders, view as tasks or projects, can be delivered on time in semiconductor turnkey services deserves to be studied. There are basically two major concepts in Critical Chain Multi-Project Management. They are "project buffer" and "buffer management" in multi project operation. The former is utilized to calculate the due date while the latter serves as the monitoring and control mechanism. The project buffer strongly influences the due-date performance. Thus to verify the feasibility of the estimate of project buffer proposed by Dr. Goldratt is necessary. The concept that Dr. Goldratt arbitrarily divided the project buffer intothree equal zones for buffer management [2], which has been criticized by many researchers, needs to be justified, too. A case with real world data is employed in this study. Simulation model build in eM-Plant is experimented. Results show that the estimate of project buffer may not be proper while the buffer management works well in this typical case.