Smart Lot Flow Management (SLFM) for Semiconductor Industry

Shop Floor Management - Industry Trends and Challenges

The use of semiconductors is increasing daily as most products are not devoid of semiconductors. As a result, the semiconductor industry is growing at a tremendous pace. For the semiconductor industry to flourish, the supply chain needs to be strong to meet these growing demands. That means Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) also needs to be capable of supporting these supply chain needs.

The manufacturing in the semiconductor industry is entirely Lot-based. The Lot and Lot attributes must be traced from the FAB, Sort/Prob, Bump, Final Test, and Assembly stages. Even in the Fab stage, WIP needs to be monitored – what Lots have started and what is happening with those Lots. The traceability and auditability need to be maintained even through the extended supply chains; outsourced manufacturing can achieve this through effective shop floor management solution.

This becomes further complicated when Lots are split or merged or when lots are translated to reflect a new Lot number or part number. All such Lot operations make the system requirements complex.

Oracle eBusiness Suite (EBS) has a separate module, Oracle Shop Floor Management, which offers a solution for Lot-based manufacturing. However, when it comes to Oracle Fusion, there is a gap that exists around these requirements. Currently, Oracle Fusion does not have features to support Lot-based manufacturing. Additionally, Oracle has no roadmap for addressing Lot-based manufacturing in Fusion. This poses many challenges for semiconductor companies that want to implement Oracle Fusion as their ERP system. Many companies would like to migrate from Oracle eBusiness Suite (EBS) to Fusion or enjoy a fresh Fusion implementation; however, since the primary requirement of Lot-based manufacturing is not addressed, they are hesitant to implement Fusion.

Solution

Jade Global has nearly two decades of experience in the Semiconductor industry, and we have performed multiple ERP implementations and enhancement projects for the Semiconductor industry. Jade was one of the first SI to implement Oracle Fusion. With our industry-proven semiconductor industry experience, we have come up with a solution that addresses requirements around Lot-based manufacturing. The solution is called Smart Lot Flow Management (SLFM), which addresses the following critical requirements around Lot-based manufacturing:

• Lot creation
• Lot splitting
• Lot merging
• Lot translation – Lot number change or part number change
• Binning
• Lot traceability and genealogy

When you choose Jade as your Oracle Fusion implementation partner, you will get a ready-made solution for Lot-based manufacturing. This eliminates the custom solution development phase in the implementation and helps to reduce the implementation timeline.

SLFM is an ERP agnostic solution for the semiconductor industry. It is now developed to work with Oracle Fusion and Oracle NetSuite, and It can also work with other ERP systems, such as SAP. The only change is to call the API/web services of the respective ERP systems. The diagram provided below depicts the high-level working of SLFM.

The solution is built on top of Oracle Fusion and NetSuite manufacturing. It leverages the native features of Oracle Fusion and provides a solution to address the gaps by using the features available in the ERP system . For example, good solutions are already available in Fusion for outside processing and cost accounting; therefore, SLFM leverages these features that are available in Fusion.

Typically, B2B integrations are involved in the fabless semiconductor industry, and SLFM works seamlessly with these B2B integrations. It is also flexible to integrate with other B2B solutions. The following diagram explains the overall system architecture and how SLFM helps to integrate subcontractors with the ERP system of semiconductor companies.

SLFM is hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and uses Oracle DBaaS (APEX). No additional licenses are required, apart from SaaS and DBaaS.

Conclusion

Jade has the ability and professional expertise to help organizations implement Smart Lot Flow Management(SLFM), which helps Semicon customers migrate seamlessly to Oracle Cloud Applications. It is a must-have for Fabless Manufacturers in Oracle Cloud and eliminates manual workarounds in Supply Chain processes. Contact us to learn more!