Agent-Based Decision Support in Borderless fab Scenarios in Semiconductor Manufacturing

The design and the implementation of a multi-agent system (MAS) for a borderless fab scenario is described. In such a scenario, lots are transferred from one wafer fab to a nearby one to perform process steps of the transferred lots. Production planning is carried out individually for each of the wafer fabs. The modeling of the available and requested capacity in the production planning models of the participating wafer fabs is affected by the lot transfer. The transfer of the route information from one wafer fab to another to automatically generate the linear programming models is described. Production planning is carried out in a rolling horizon setting using a cloud-based infrastructure. We show by simulation experiments with the MAS with a correct modeling of the capacity in production planning results in improved profit compared to a setting where the lot transfer is not taken into account in the planning formulations.