Abstract
Mass-production is a typical method to reduce manufacturing cost. Since the market demand is unstable for technology-based products, manufacturers cannot just choose the product mix based on the production viewpoint. In order to enhance the capability of responding to customer demand, both the flexible production and sufficient capacity are the key factors in the technology-based product manufacturing. Using a medium-scale production line in semiconductor foundry industry as an example, this research focuses on how to maintain a sufficient capacity with varying product mix by applying a framework of flexible production methods. The goal is to reduce the capacity variation and to enhance the average capacity level by using redundancy, process modularization and process alignment. In addition, the study also describes the benchmarking process used in the case, analyzes and compares the impacts and relationships of various production methods. Through the actual participation and the observation in project execution, this study analyzes the problems of the case company, especially identifies the key factors affecting the capacity. In developing the solution, this research introduces an“integrated production redundancy mechanism” and proposes the performance indices to measure the improvements. This research also establishes a structured production improvement process to include the flexibility indices for priority setting as the key step. The approach could provide a model for reducing the impact on capacity due to the change in product mix.