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10th Edition: A New Low Cost Approach in 200 mm and 300 mm AMHS |
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Feb 03, 2005 at 04:28 PM |
THOMAS
ARZT, Clean Room Consulting GmbH, Freiburg, Germany
FREDDY
BULCKE, eFBe International Marketing and Engineering Consultancy bvba,
BelgiumABSTRACT
There
has been quite some speculation in the semiconductor industry recently
with regard to the transition to 300 mm wafer fabs. In the meantime, it
seems obvious that the ambitious time schedule will experience some
changes and a severe delay. This delay in the launching of 300 mm wafer
fabs forces the semiconductor industry to consider further improvements
of 200 mm automation scenarios both in CIM/MES and AMHS.
In this paper
a new low cost approach for an automated material handling system
(AMHS) was investigated using a conveyor system for interbay transport
and intrabay WIP buffering located on the subfloor of a wafer fab. For
the first time a model wafer fab was simulated with a conveyor system
responsible for the complete material handling. In comparison to the
typical scenario where operators are responsible for lot
transportation, the simulation results indicate that a conveyor system
does not have a negative impact on the key performance parameters of
the wafer fab such as cycle time, WIP, and throughput, which probably
can not be said for other types of AMHS systems.
The AMHS system was
built according to the results of the simulation conducted with the
discrete event simulator AutoMod/AutoSched to provide improved
production flexibility and to minimize the system and operational
costs. Initial industry comments favour this concept. One advantage of
this new approach is that it certainly helps to build experience before
launching 300 mm AMHS automation.
 A New Low Cost Approach in 200 mm and 300 mm AMHS
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Fab management 
