A slack-diversifying nonlinear fluctuation smoothing rule for job dispatching in a wafer fabrication factory

This study proposes a slack-diversifying nonlinear fluctuation smoothing rule to reduce the average cycle time in a wafer fabrication factory. The slack-diversifying nonlinear fluctuation smoothing rule is derived from the one-factor tailored nonlinear fluctuation smoothing rule for cycle time variation (1f-TNFSVCT) by dynamically maximizing the standard deviation of the slack, which has been shown to improve scheduling performance in several previous studies. The effectiveness of the proposed rule has been validated via using it with a simulated data set. Based on the findings in this research we also derived several directions that can be exploited in the future.

► A rule is proposed to reduce average cycle time in a wafer fabrication factory. ► The proposed rule maximizes the standard deviation of the slack dynamically. ► The proposed rule does not have the drawbacks of the other existing rules. ► The proposed rule can be self-adjusted to respond the dynamic changes in factory.