Re-engineering the STMicroelectronics manufacturing model

Current manufacturing systems have a very structured production model, especially when high and precision is required, as in semiconductor devices manufacturing. In addition, rapid changes in production and market requirements may occur, hence great flexibility is also essential. These goals often impose to re-engineer periodically existing models, in order to remove its limitations also adding new capabilities, significantly reducing the time-to-market of new products. Updating a model generally also requires to improve existing applications, both re-writing software components as well as adding new features. Here we consider the current model used inside STMicroelectronics facilities to define production flow. We first describe the model and its limitations, then we introduce an enhanced, object-oriented model, with inheritance and hierarchies support. We also consider which improvements are required on existing applications in order to support such model, introducing an enhanced environment.