In this article, we present some examples of Taipy Applications developed for the semiconductor industry. These applications range from rich Data Visualization to more complex Decision-Support Systems.

Most of these applications are B2B applications and can be divided into 3 different categories:

1. Company-Level Applications

These applications are definitely level 3 since sophisticated AI/Mathematical models work hand-in-hand with What-If Analysis.

Supply-Chain Optimization

In the semiconductor industry, it is essential to regularly establish a plan for the upcoming months. Such a plan needs to take into account the various production sites (Fabs, Assembly, Test), transportation, inventory, raw materials, semi-finished, and finished products. These models can be fairly large, and precise modeling of the capacity and yield is essential. These new projects are replacing older-generation supply chain software that is too slow and heavy to be sustainable.

These applications excel at finding the best supply chain setup to minimize various objectives: costs (transportation, storage, etc.), carbon footprint, fixed costs, customer service levels, etc. Many scenarios are typically executed, analyzed, and compared. Such a Decision Support System is essential and very often leads to millions of dollars in savings.

Capacity Planner (aka "CP")

CP combines decisions on the acquisition of new critical/expensive equipment (i.e., Photolitho tools) with the impact on the overall production plan. The purchase of new critical equipment, its arrival at the plant, its set-up, its tests & qualification of the equipment need to be synced up with the production plan. CP generates optimal equipment acquisition plans for the mid to long-term, taking into account various objectives (costs, throughput, cycle time, etc). CP can be used for a single production site or across multiple sites.

What-if Analyses are extremely important to validate various demand / financial / capacity scenarios.

Such a model fits into a larger Equipment Life Cycle Management Application where the phasing-out and qualification process are managed across a large set of tools / equipment.

It is important to note that these applications make extensive use of Taipy’s Scenario Management. In effect, many different scenarios need to be built, evaluated, and compared. These scenarios are easily modelled in Taipy using different assumptions in terms of Plant capacity, Demand Forecast, Objectives (Cost-based, Profit-Based, …).

CP's objectives are to optimize the timing of acquisition and preparation for these expensive tools so that the plants achieve the company’s production objectives. This precise planning has demonstrated a 10% to 15% reduction in preparation time and a smoother integration with the Fab production environment.

2. Plant-Level Applications

OnLine Scheduler (aka “OLS”): Production Scheduling

This is a factory-level application particularly suited for highly automated plants. It optimizes the throughput or cycle time for critical steps such as Photolithography or Diffusion.

OLS uses advanced AI models to decide upon the sequence and timing of the lots on the different equipment. Taipy provides the overall graphical interface, scenario management as well as the core optimization engine. This corresponds to an AI-enabled Decision Support System (Level 3 in the above diagram).

OLS optimizes cycle time and throughput across one or several sectors in the plant. Cycle time is typically reduced by 10% on average, with even higher results obtained for urgent lots. Throughput is also increased for bottleneck equipment, ranging between 5% and 10%.

Plant Level Analytics

Fabs need modern analytics that combines lots of equipment/production data with smart prediction models:

• Monitoring / Predicting Equipment failure,
• Predictive Maintenance,
• Anomaly detection: AI-based pattern recognition is used to identify and classify defects, helping engineers understand their root causes and take corrective actions.
• Yield Prediction across a production route,
• etc.

​Taipy provides a great platform to visualize, monitor and predict different production indicators. These applications range from Level 1 to Level 3. Taipy support for large time series is essential for these types of analytical applications.