Fluctuation smoothing scheduling policies for multiple process flow fabrication plants

This paper addresses the problem of reducing the mean and variance of cycle time in large multi-process flow reentrant systems by using a modified version of the Fluctuation Smoothing for Mean Cycle Time (FSMCT) scheduling policy. The plant models used in this paper were constructed and distributed by SEMATECH. Three such models are studied in this paper. The work done in this paper is the first look at the feasibility of using the FSMCT policy on multi-process flow systems. The size and complexities of the models used here limited the number of simulations performed in this initial study.