In the new generation of semiconductor factories, or "fabs," the fab will produce wafers that are 300mm in diameter.  While this will have important benefits in improving production efficiency, the increased wafer size will require most material handling in the fab to be automated, simply because the increased weight of a container of wafers cannot be ergonomically carried by a human operator.

Designing the automation required for these new factories has been a major challenge for the industry.  Discrete-event simulation models, though powerful for purposes of design and what-if analysis, require such long development times that it is difficult to use them extensively in the design process.  Analytic models, though quick in terms of development time, do not capture low-level system details that have important impact on system performance.  In this project, we are developing approaches for design of material handling systems that involve generic specification of available technologies and their configurations to aid in automated creation of simulation models to test proposed system performance, as well as analysis techniques to aid in multi-criteria decision-making.

Contact:  douglas.bodner@isye.gatech.edu