Abstract
Equipment down impacts production capability and produces financial losses. In particular, in semiconductor manufacturing where equipment cost constitutes approximately three quarters of the total manufacturing cost, the ability to estimate the impact of equipment down and enable proper equipment management decisions has significant benefits for manufacturing efficiency. This research developed a model and a decision support system to estimate equipment capacity loss for multi-product re-entrant manufacturing processes. The model can also be used in straight-line and single-product production situation with simplified parameter inputs. Contributions of this research include: 1.Providing a means to estimate the overall capacity loss by a given machine down whether it is unexpected or planned. The impacts and the determining factors for various scenarios of capacity losses can be calculated so that maintenance and repair schedule can be made more effectively. 2.Providing a decision-making process to enable proper manipulations of production parameters toward minimum machine capacity loss.