Human WIP Delivery in a Manual Fab

Human work in progress (WIP) delivery in a manual fab is a case study to reduce waiting waste by implementing a dedicated transporter of WIP in a manual 300mm semiconductor fab setting. All waiting waste reduction is valuable in research/manufacturing because it reduces cycle time, alleviates WIP starvation at downstream tools, and increases utilization of the tool family. An experiment was done to test the impact of having a person solely responsible for delivering WIP to the tool. While utilization did not improve as expected, tool throughput was improved in relation to the WIP starvation level during the timeframe of the experiment.