A survey of dispatching rules for operational control in wafer fabrication

Production scheduling in semiconductor wafer fabs is a non-trivial task owing to the complexity of wafer fabrication. Dispatching rules are the most commonly used tools for shop floor control in this industry. Over the years, advanced dispatching rules, capable of impacting multiple performance measures and utilising both upstream and downstream information in assigning lot priorities, have been introduced. This article aims to provide an overview of these rules and explores the effectiveness of their performance as they pertain to different areas in a wafer fab. Based on this overview, several future directions on developing new dispatching rules are also proposed.

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