The Industry 4. At the same time, critical questions are asked related to the benefits of Industry 4. It is mainly criticized that the requirements and consequences of Industry 4.
The semiconductor industry is capital intensive. The manufacturing process is very complex due to reentrant flows in combination with very long cycle times and multiple sources of uncertainty. This industry is an extreme field for production planning and control solutions from algorithmic point of view, as well as from a software and information systems point of view.
The degree of automation was always and is still high compared to other industries. On the one hand, one can argue that in wafer fabs elements of smart manufacturing are already realized, namely most of manufacturing information is available in real-time, the manufacturing process is paperless, lots can be uniquely identified and located, and collaborative human-machine interaction exists. On the other hand, there are significant differences in automation efforts related to manual work-intensive industries such as automotive or air-craft manufacturing where assembly operations are performed in flow lines.
In addition to shop-floor control concerns, supply chain management problems have become more and more important which necessitate a horizontal integration of the semiconductor supply chain and digital transformation for the industry ecosystem. The major objective of the proposed Dagstuhl Seminar is related to developing a research agenda for making smart semiconductor manufacturing decisions and the information systems to empower flexible decisions for smart production.
The research agenda will be developed around the following two main topics:. This includes innovative modeling approaches for supply chain planning and more detailed production planning and scheduling in semiconductor manufacturing and an analysis of requirements for next-generation information systems that support such decisions.
