Bottleneck Starvation Indicators for Shop Floor Control

Abstmct-A graphical tool for inventory and production control, currently in use at a major U.S. semiconductor manufacturer, is presented. The tool supports a bottleneck starvation avoidance policy. Equations for calculating the bottleneck in a clean room manufacturing environment are presented. A new constraint which must be satisfied to ensure starvation avoidance is introduced. A technique for helping a manual decision process conform to this constraint is presented. Many graphs are given to illustrate the concepts.