Patent ID: 6459946
Filing Date: 2002-10-01
Classification: G05B,G06Q,Y02P

Abstract:
A method of determining a total number of operators needed at a semiconductor wafer work center to achieve a wafer manufacturing goal, the work center including a wafer lot tracking system and a plurality of processing stations for processing a plurality of lots of semiconductor wafers to be manufactured, the method comprising the steps of:setting the wafer manufacturing goal; determining a highest operator throughput as a maximum rate of wafers that can be processed per operator based on data from the lot tracking system; determining a minimum number of operators that are needed to process wafers in the work center to achieve the manufacturing goal based on the wafer manufacturing goal and the highest operator throughput; determining a number of working operators needed to process wafers in the semiconductor wafer work center to achieve the wafer manufacturing goal by increasing the minimum number of operators based on characteristics of the processing stations; determining an operator availability based on an average number of working operators and a number of all operators at the work center; and determining the total number of operators needed at the semiconductor wafer work center to achieve the wafer manufacturing goal based on the operator availability and the number of working operators.