A SURVEY OF APPLICATIONS OF FLUID MODELS TO SEMICONDUCTOR FAB OPERATIONS

R. Billings, J.J. Hasenbein

Historically, classical queueing theory models have not been applicable to modeling wafer fabs because of the highly reentrant flows in such systems. In the last decade, researchers in the area of modern queueing theory have made considerable progress in developing a new type of model known as a multiclass fluid network, which addresses some of the shortfalls of earlier analytic models. In this paper, we review various models which have been used to model wafer and fabs. We then discuss the multiclass fluid model in more depth, and describe how it can be used for analyzing throughout and finding optimal scheduling policies for such systems.