A review on strategic capacity planning for the semiconductor manufacturing industry

Due to the high capital investment cost in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, strategic capacity planning plays an important role in improving business performance. The reasons that make these problems especially difficult are: the complex fabrication process, rapid changes in technology and products, the long lead time and the high cost of capacity increment, and the high uncertain demand and capacity. Hence, a review of the existing solutions to capacity planning to cope with these difficulties is important for developing new methodologies and practices. In this paper, we provide a review of the current research and fundamental methods in strategic capacity planning, identify emerging methods for capacity planning, and take an in-depth look at future research interests.