A practical fab design procedure for wafer fabrication plants

Facility design is crucial to the performance of wafer fabs in the semiconductor industry. This research proposes a practical Fab Design Procedure (FDP) to conduct quick calculations to develop and evaluate initial fab design alternatives. A series of practical formulae are presented to sequentially determine the following design parameters from an interbay point of view: the required number of machines; machine grouping and allocation; interbay flow matrix; bay dimension and location; interbay distance matrix; the required number of vehicles in an interbay material handling system; and the average wafer moving distance. Rules-of-thumb for wafer fab design on the basis of FDP are also suggested. A case study is used to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of FDP. Results indicate that FDP is able to quickly calculate the required number of machines and related fab design parameters. With this tool, fab designers would be able to evaluate design alternatives and conduct what-if analysis in the initial phase of fab design.