Manufacturing cost analysis system in semiconductor enterprises

Semiconductor manufacturing may be one of the most complex types of manufacturing today. It can be functionally divided into two large manufacturing processes such as front-end (wafer fabrication and probe) and back-end (assembly and test). The total number of steps in two manufacturing processes is approaching 100 to 500 steps or more steps for each device. The complexity and stochastic nature of its processes make the cost analysis difficult. Traditional costing techniques allocate costs to products based on attributes of a single unit. Typical attributes include direct labour or the number of machine hours required to manufacture a unit. Hence, allocations vary directly with the volume of units produced. In contrast, ABC (Activity Based Costing) systems focus on activities required to produce each product or provide each service based on the consumption of activities of each product or service. In this paper, we will introduce an activity-based cost estimating system developed for semiconductor industry. Significance: This paper describes a newly developed manufacturing cost analysis system for semiconductor manufacturing enterprises, So far, there has been almost no research paper, which explains how the components in ABC system interact with components in planning system. This paper explains the integration architecture and work flows in order to provide a basic design concept for integrated costing system. This system is one of the modules of X-CITTIC planning system, which has been successfully implemented in two major European semiconductor enterprises.