Optimal Control of a Manufacturing Process That Involves Trial Runs

Guillermo Gallego, David Yao and Ilkyeong Moon
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Guillermo Gallego: Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027-6699
Ilkyeong Moon: Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027-6699

Management Science, 1993, vol. 39, issue 12, 1499-1505

Abstract: We study a manufacturing process that is quite common in semiconductor wafer fabrication. In generic terms, the job to be processed consists of J units. To process the job, a "setup" is required, followed by routine processing and testing. In principle, the entirety of the job can be set up and processed in a single batch. However, the setup is prone to failure, leading to loss of units. Hence, in practice trial runs are often conducted, with each trial involving a small batch of units. Here we identify an optimal control of such processes. The policy prescribes a maximum of k* (\le J) single-unit trial runs. To establish optimality, we use the recently developed notion of stochastic convexity/concavity and related machinery.

Keywords: semiconductor manufacturing; stochastic convexity; optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
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