An automatic modeling approach to the strategic analysis of semiconductor fabrication facilities

The authors developed a framework for analyzing semiconductor fabrication facilities where each processing step of each product can use a collection of resources. The interaction of these resources is not prespecified by the analysis system but is described by the modeler. The present framework includes three types of modeling approaches: analytic approximation, simulation, and a hybrid analytic/simulation technique. All models are automatically generated from a data description of the facility and the products produced, along with the resource interaction models provided by the user. The novel feature of the present approach is that the data description language includes a simple but quite flexible simulation-like modeling language for expressing resource interactions. The analytic modeling approach is an extension of the standard decomposition method used for studying networks of queues. In the present hybrid analytic/simulation technique the authors use simulation to estimate processing step fiow times to improve the performance of the analytic model.