A service-oriented integration framework for semiconductor manufacturing systems

Currently, manufacturing enterprise integration is mainly conducted using proprietary approaches, which are expensive and time-consuming, resulting in the integrated manufacturing systems with a little business agility. Well-defined and consistent frameworks for integrating a variety of disparate and heterogeneous applications on the shop floor to enable essential business agility to meet the needs of next generation manufacturing are in great demand. This paper presents a service-oriented integration framework for facilitating system integration in an automated semiconductor manufacturing environment. By taking advantage of the advances of open computing service architecture and networked computing technologies, the proposed integration framework aims to provide an integrated automated Semiconductor Manufacturing System (SMS) increased productivity, efficiency and business agility. In the framework, manufacturing processes defined as production services in a Virtual Production Line (VPL) can be dynamically added, adjusted or removed. Moreover, production services can be remotely controlled, monitored and inspected in a timely manner. The results of this research arose out of the successful implementation of enterprise-wide manufacturing process control and recipe management in a small-scale back-end SMS.