Back-end Semiconductor Research Articles

The implementation of an activity-based costing collaborative planning system for semiconductor backend production

While the market turns to an environment with low profit margins for semiconductor backend operations, it is hard for an independent firm to survive today. Forming strategic alliances or integrating an enterprise's internal firms by means of collaborative planning/operations to gain competitive advantage is inevitable. This paper presents the development of an activity-based costing collaborative production planning system (ABC/CPPS) to help production planners to estimate the manufacturing profit of semiconductor backend turnkey (combined IC assembly and testing) operational services at the early stage of order release to production line in a collaborative context. The estimation is under the real constraints of production resources. A predicate/transition net (Pr/Tr net) is used to simulate and implement the activity-based costing (ABC) model with the dynamic characteristics of a production line incorporated. A financial measure, profit, is used to supplement and indicate the consequence of the planning result and link the view to the enterprise's financial vision.

An approach to regulating machine sharing in reconfigurable back-end semiconductor manufacturing

By complying with the operational philosophy of virtual production lines, a back-end semiconductor manufacturing system can be controlled and managed with better reconfigurability. However, due to the absence of a fully-integrated information system and the gaining popularity of distributed computing, machine reconfiguration decisions are made by machine controllers on the shop floor where heterarchical control architecture is typically used. This research investigates how non-cooperative game theory could be applied for facilitating the decision process reconfiguration decision-making at the machine controller level as machines are competed by multiple jobs streams. This paper presents how material flow traffic can be better regulated in a reconfigurable manufacturing environment. A study using an industrial pilot system is discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach, in which heuristics are used to determine the game specification.

Integrated design approach for virtual production line-based reconfigurable manufacturing systems

Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs) have been recognized as a new manufacturing paradigm. In light of their enhanced flexibility and responsiveness, RMSs are considered to be mostly applicable to the very dynamic and unpredictable marketplaces of the near future. However, systematic approaches to the design and ramp-up of an RMS have not been well addressed. This paper presents a virtual production line-based (VPL) approach to the design and operation of a reconfigurable manufacturing system. Shop floor attributed finite-capacity automaton and VPL attributed finite-capacity automaton are proposed for modelling the control of an RMS, which leads to ease of control software development. Algorithms for balancing VPLs to maximize the productivity of an RMS are discussed. The results of simulation runs of the proposed methodology and algorithms applied to simplified back-end semiconductor manufacturing are provided.

Novel Noncontact Thickness Metrology for Partially Transparent and Nontransparent Wafers for Backend Semiconductor Manufacturing

ABSTRACTSingle probe infrared low coherence optical interferometry has been proven to be an effective tool for characterization of thin and ultra-thin semiconductor Si and compound materials wafers. Its application was however limited to wafers transparent at probing wavelength, and having relatively smooth surfaces. Purpose of this paper is to present an extension of low coherence interferometry to characterization of non-transparent wafers, and wafers with rough surfaces.

Virtual production lines design for back-end semiconductor manufacturing systems

This paper introduces the virtual production line (VPL) concept, which initiates a new method to model the shop floor from both control and management point of view. Heuristic algorithms are presented to dynamically configure a large system into many VPLs, which ensure the line balance and efficiency, and accurately predicate the completion time for each work-order. The proposed methodology and algorithms are demonstrated through a simplified back-end semiconductor manufacturing system.

Bin covering algorithms in the second stage of the lot to order matching problem

We formulate the problem of effectively assigning semiconductor fabrication wafer lots to customer orders of various sizes, or the lot-to-order matching problem, as an integer programming problem. Our goal in this paper is to develop an efficient, practical method for solving this problem for various performance measures. Because of its complexity we decompose the problem into a knapsack problem coupled with a generalized bin-covering problem, and solve these subproblems sequentially using heuristic methods. We restrict our attention to solution methods for the less-common second subproblem, and analyze the performance of several heuristics using a data set representative of real situations in a semiconductor back-end. Based on this analysis, we show that these heuristics perform significantly better than current industrial practice in the context of the overall problem.