Semiconductor final-test scheduling under setup operator constraints

Abstract

We consider a semiconductor final-test scheduling problem that aims at minimizing the total weighted tardiness. In contrast to previous studies on this problem, we explicitly take account of the need to assign human operators to setup operations. We present decomposition-based heuristic solution approaches and a mixed integer program. In a computational study based on real-world problem instances that mimic settings at our industry partner, we show that our heuristics clearly outperform a standard solver when computational time is limited. Based on this result, we provide decision support for managers by analyzing the capability and effect of rescheduling jobs in the presence of a highly dynamic environment with frequently changing customer requests and common test machine failures.