"Gantt Charts for Production Flow": a Performance Analysis Framework for Shop Floor Control Effectiveness Evaluation and Monitoring

Shop floor controls have recently become fundamental for production controllers and industrial engineers, to apply scheduling and dispatching policies in the highly competitive semiconductor industry. Despite the emphasis put on shop floor scheduling techniques, the impact on the actual operations of the fab may not reflect controllers' expectations. We have developed a framework which provides them with means of analyzing the production flow, through statistical analysis of equipment, operators and flow linearity parameters, and through data collection for historical comparisons between simulated and real activity of the fab, which can be helpful for evaluating and documenting the improvements on manufacturing performance offered by the use of shop floor controls.