Using `Locked Wafers´ to Prioritize Factory Resources

Factory planning tools which do queuing analysis or constraint modeling are necessary to properly manage factories with diverse and changing product mixes. These tools, however, often do not capture the complexities of real- world factory operation. A real-time monitor of factory performance is necessary to insure that proper tactical prioritization of resources occurs. ´Locked Wafers´ is a method of real-time and short-term temporal analysis which predicts factory performance while normalizing the impacts of problems which historically have been difficult to compare. By using Locked Wafers, management can effectively focus the actions of all functional groups inside of factory operations.