A web Services based collaborative management framework for semiconductor equipment

Web Services have afforded inter-enterprise information technologies to integrate heterogeneous systems in the e-manufacturing environment along the supply chain. In a semiconductor foundry, the equipment failure has long been recognized as a major source of unpredicted production process breakdown and excessive production loss. Equipment maintenance management is one of the important tasks in semiconductor manufacturing. Due to the prosperity of Internet and information technologies,e-diagnostics and e-maintenance through Internet have been considered as important applications in industry. Web Services can assist the data integration in heterogeneous e-manufacturing systems to support faster and remote maintenance functions. In this paper, a Web Service s based Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) platform, namely WS-CPFR, is developed to collaboratively manage spare parts in semiconductor equipment between equipment suppliers and semiconductor factories. The global application involving multi-factory and multi-supplier of this WS -CPFR platform can be easily achieved with Web Services technology.