A SPINE LAYOUT DESIGN METHOD FOR SEMICONDUCTOR FABRICATION FACILITIESCONTAINING AUTOMATED MATERIAL-HANDLING SYSTEMS

A bay configuration arranged along a central spine and served by an au tomated monorail material-handling system are common designs for the l ayout and material-handling system in new semiconductor wafer fabricat ion facilities. Investigates the facility design problem in semiconduc tor fabrication facilities and proposes a procedure to determine the o ptimal spine layout design, given a design of the material-handling sy stem. Explains and tests the procedure to demonstrate the use of the m odel for solving semiconductor facility design problems. The procedure is applicable for the important semicondutor industry as well as in o ther facilities that use a central spine layout configuration.