A Send-ahead Policy for a Semiconductor Wafer Fabrication Process

We study a manufacturing process that is quite common in semiconductor wafer fabrication of semiconductor chip production. A machine is used to process a job consisting of J wafers. Each job requires a setup, and the i$_{th}$ setup for a job is sucessful with probability P$_{i}$. The setup is prone to failure, which results in the loss of expensive wafers. Therefore, a tiral run is first conducted on a small batch. If the set up is successful, the test is passed and the balance of the job can be processed. If the setup is unsuccessful, the exposed wafers are lost to scrap and the mask is realigned. The process then repeats on the balance of the job. We call this as send-ahead policy and consider general policies in which the number of wafers that are sent shead depend on the cost of the raw wafer, the sequence of success probabilities, and the balance of the job. We model this process and determine the expected number of good wafers per job,the expected time to process a job, and the long run average throughput. An algorithm to minimize the cost per good wafer subject to a demand constraint is provided.d.d.