A Planning and Control Model for Customer-Oriented IC Development and Manufacturing

Within the last 15 years many semiconductor enterprises have introduced CIM concepts successfully. The main effort was spent on the development and introduction of manufacturing execution systems (MES) also known as computer aided manufacturing systems (CAM) or shop floor control systems (SFC). During the last few years more and more of the focus within semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing has shifted from the factory level to the enterprise level. This is mainly due to the growing globalization of the companies. Since semiconductor enterprises increasingly act in a global manner and logistic processes for manufacturing and development span around the whole world, information systems and related architectures have to be developed to cover the new requirements resulting from this focus shift. The efficient processing and distribution of logistic information will play a key role in giving semiconductor enterprises a significantly higher degree of flexibility, productivity and quality.