Enhanced Line Balance View
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Introduction
Version 6.7 of Factory Dashboard improves how users are able to visualize multiple product lines in their facility. Our line viewer allows a user to view the line by common step, or alternatively by a grouping of common steps which we call "segments." These segments are typically as associated with a photo masking layer, where all the common steps within the mask layer are grouped into a single segment.
We added metrics to quickly determine the under-performing areas for the current and previous days for all segments within the line. Each metric is customizable, and this new report allows a user to quickly select and chart each metric based on their personal preference.
Key Features
- Display WIP Targets by common step or segment
- INFICON can provide WIP targets based on our improved line balance algorithm
- Highlight common steps or segments that will not achieve the selected metric's target
- Display the amount of WIP that moves between segments
- Select current shift / day, previous shift / day, or rolling 24-hour metrics
Example: Showing Route Segment Moves for the Previous 24 Hours
A user opts to chart by route segment, and selects to view the number of wafers that have left each route segment within the past 24 hours.
The resulting display based on the above selection will output the current WIP, WIP target, and number of wafers that have left each route segment for the past 24 hours (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Enhanced Line Balance View showing the number of wafers leaving each specific route segment for the last 24 hours.
Summary and Future Features
The new line viewer is a useful monitoring tool for quickly determining the health of the multiple product lines that reside in a facility by:
- Identifying areas of the line that require engineering attention based on recent outputs of common steps and/or step segments
- Improving line balance by showing the WIP target compared to the current WIP situation, along with the problematic common steps that are negatively impacting line balance
We plan to further enhance our line viewer page in future releases by also including our line balance algorithm output, as used by the INFICON Scheduler, into the line viewer chart.
For those who have access to our help site and wish to learn more about our line viewer page and other future Dashboard enhancements, please visit our Factory Dashboard release notes and help site page.