Multiple product admission control in semiconductor manufacturing systems with process queue time (PQT) constraints

The objective of this paper is to develop production control methods for multi-product systems subject to PQT constraints. However, it is computationally infeasible to solve multiple product problems in a single dynamic optimization model, and we therefore first formulate a single product admission control problems using Markov decision processes (MDP). Based on observations from the single product MDP model, an innovative multiple product admission control (MPAC) heuristic is developed. In simulation study, we compare the performance of MPAC with other popular dispatching methods in literature. Compare to other control methods in literature, the proposed (MPAC) method can reduce production costs by at least 33.8% and reduce scrap count by at least 59.5% in average.