ANALYZING THE TRADE-OFF BETWEEN QUALITY AND SOJOURN TIME WHEN OPTIMIZING SAMPLING PLANS IN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING

Inspired by semiconductor manufacturing, this paper studies a system where the products processed on multiple production machines are sampled to be measured on a single metrology tool. In a previous research, we show that minimizing the expected number of defective products is not ensured by using the metrology tool at its maximum capacity, as it induces a congestion that impacts the expected product loss. However, the congestion of the metrology tool also impacts the expected sojourn time of products in metrology. Hence, in this paper, we analyze the trade-off between the expected product loss and the expected sojourn time when deciding how much of the metrology capacity should be used. Numerical results show that, depending on some parameters, the expected sojourn time can be reduced without increasing much the expected product loss.