MODELING AND SIMULATION OF A SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING FAB FOR CYCLE TIME ANALYSIS

Abstract

The goal of the thesis is to conduct a study of the effects of scheduling policies and machine failures on the manufacturing cycle time of the Integrated Circuit (IC) manufacturing process for two processor chips, namely Skylake and Kabylake, manufactured by Intel. The fab simulation model was developed as First in First Out (FIFO), Shortest Processing Time (SPT), Priority based (PB), and Failure FIFO (machine failures) model, and the average cycle times and queue waiting times under the four scheduling policy models were compared for both the Skylake and Kabylake wafers. The study revealed that scheduling policies SPT and PB increased the average cycle time for Skylake wafers while decreasing the average cycle time for the Kabylake wafers, when compared to the base FIFO model. Machine failures increased the average cycle time for both types of wafers.