Development of comprehensive WIP performance monitoring system for semiconductor fabrication foundry: a qualitative action research approach

The Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) is a complex and delicate process in the semiconductor industry. In typical 30,000 wafer capacity of a single foundry business model, the CMOS products are mixed of various technologies to serve wider market segments. Total devices range from 100 to 200 devices. This situation has created variables for process time, equipment usages and number of processing steps which lead to inconsistent work-in-progress (WIP) profiling at respective time periods. The main objective for this study is to achieve an optimal solution to the wafer fabrication. In such a complex system, it is important to develop a way to detect the floating and dynamic bottleneck. This study employed the classical usage of Action Research method, which involves the researcher and participants working together to identify and solve the problems. The comprehensive WIP profile could improves the operational management of high volumes of the wafer fabrication foundry. The system able to trace, identify, monitor and feedback the WIP spike to the factory manager for a real time decision. The segmentation of the WIP profile as PrePoly1, PrePoly2, Poly, PostPoly1, PostPoly2, Backend and Final zone improves the overall factory operation visibility to plan for the WIP movement. The results indicate that a dynamic WIP management approach improved the fabrication factory utilization up to 5%. .The segmentation of the WIP profile to 7 different segments is something that will improve the industry productivity and also body of knowledge, Depending of the industry, the WIP profile segmentation is something new to identify immediate constraint so that the factory authority able to take immediate action