Evaluating capacity pooling strategy in semiconductor manufacturing: a productivity perspective study

Abstract

Recently, increasing attention has been focusing on the concept of the borderless fab, which expands capacity through a manufacturing strategy rather than capital investments. In a borderless fab, the capacity of several wafer fabs is pooled, and partially completed wafers are allowed to move from one fab to another. This paper proposes a model to evaluate the potential benefits of adopting capacity pooling from the macro-viewpoint. We demonstrate our model using actual fullscale fab-level operational data, and the result reveals that capacity pooling can improve monthly capacity by 3% on average.

A digital equipment identifier system

“…Ahlerta et al (2009) assessed the uncertainties of orders and capacity in a heterarchical production network and solved the problem associated with sizing the network capacity pool. Chen and Chien (2011) pooled the capacity of several wafer fabrication factories, thereby enabling moving partially completed wafers to a wafer fabrication factory with more free capacity. Capacity pooling is a strategy for enabling capacity reallocation when particular equipment is already in use.…”

Capacity Collaboration in Semiconductor Supply Chain with Failure Risk and Long-term Profit

“…Generally, mathematical programming method is one of normal methods in settling the capacity coordination problems (Wu et al, 2009). A comparative study on semiconductor plants capacity coordination models shows that the capacity coordination among plants on the same supply chain stage can increase total production capacity ability for more than 3% (Chen & Chien, 2010). In general, most of the researches consider the supply chain coordination mechanisms (e.g.…”