A Robust Optimization Approach for Production Planning Under Exogenous Planned Lead Times

Abstract

Many production planning models applied in semiconductor manufacturing represent lead times as fixed exogenous parameters. However, in reality, lead times must be treated as realizations of released lots’ cycle times, which are in fact random variables. In this paper, we present a distributionally robust release planning model that allows planned lead time probability estimates to vary over a specified ambiguity set. We evaluate the performance of non-robust and robust approaches using a simulation model of a scaled-down wafer fabrication facility. We examine the effect of increasing uncertainty in the estimated lead time parameters on the objective function value and compare the worst-case, average optimality, and feasibility of the two approaches. The numerical results show that the average objective function value of the robust solutions are better than that of the nominal solution by a margin of almost 20% in the scenario with the highest uncertainty level.