METHODS FOR JOB CONFIGURATION IN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING

Job configuration in semiconductor manufacturing refers to the process of configuring silicon wafers in terms of chip types and volumes, org anizing collections of wafers into jobs, and determining the volume of jobs to be released into the production line, The difficulties of job configuration lie in the random yield loss, the numerous technologica l constraints, and the rigid set serviceability, requirement (i.e., de mand must be met in terms of all chip types), Motivated by the configu ration problems in the ''early-user hardware'' development programs at some IBM plants, we develop here a systematic approach to job configu ration, The centerpiece of the approach is a careful treatment of the set serviceability constraint, in terms of both probability and expect ation, It solves the job configuration problem as separable convex pro grams using marginal allocation algorithms, Through numerical examples , we demonstrate that by allowing diversity of chip tyes at either the job- or the wafer-level, higher serviceability can be achieved using fewer wafers.