The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 01, 2002
Filed:
Nov. 12, 1999
Francisco Javier Bonal Villanova, Madrid, ES;
Manuel Fernandez Romero, Madrid, ES;
Agere Systems Guardian Corp., Orlando, FL (US);
Abstract
A method and system for determining a total number of operators needed at a semiconductor wafer work center to achieve a wafer manufacturing goal is provided. The work center includes a wafer lot tracking system and a plurality of processing stations for processing a plurality of lots of semiconductor wafers to be manufactured. A highest operator throughput as a maximum rate of wafers that can be processed per operator based on data from the lot tracking system is determined, and a minimum number of operators that are needed to process wafers in the work center to achieve the manufacturing goal based on the wafer manufacturing goal and the highest operator throughput is determined. Furthermore, a determination is made of a number of working operators needed to process wafers in the semiconductor wafer work center to achieve the wafer manufacturing goal by increasing the minimum number of operators based on characteristics of the processing stations. An operator availability based on an average number of working operators and a number of all operators at the work center is also determined. The total number of operators needed at the semiconductor wafer work center to achieve the wafer manufacturing goal is then determined based on the operator availability and the number of working operators.