Applications of quantitative methods in semiconductor manufacturing

摘要

In the last decade, the electronics industry has become the largest industry in the world. The heart of this industry is the manufacturing of integrated circuits on silicon wafers. In the past, cost reduction efforts in semiconductor manufacturing sought to decrease chip size, increase wafer size, and improve yield. Simultaneously, efforts to improve operational processes inside wafer fabrication facilities were pursued. Currently, however, the improvement of operational processes is the most effective approach to achieve the desired cost reductions. Therefore, the development of efficient planning and control strategies is highly desirable in the semiconductor wafer fabrication domain. The presence of state of the art automation systems in modern wafer fabs enables the extraction of information to feed the decision technologies as well as the automated implementation of the recommendations obtained.