Optimal Control of a Manufacturing Process That Involves Trial Runs
Guillermo Gallego, David D. Yao, Ilkyeong Moon
Management Science · 1993 · Volume 39 · Issue 12
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 * (≤ 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
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