What’s new in SYSTEMA APS (Advanced Planning & Scheduling) v2025.1, SYSTEMA’s integrated solution for semiconductor shop floor scheduling and dispatching?

Semiconductor manufacturing is defined by complex workflows, stringent timelines, and dynamic production demands, SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 delivers a highly adaptive, AI-powered scheduling solution to drive operational efficiency, minimize bottlenecks, and enhance predictability in production processes.

Even in highly automated semiconductor fabs, line control engineers face daily challenges optimizing WIP flow, avoiding bottlenecks, and meeting delivery deadlines. However, unexpected equipment failures, requalification cycles, and shifting priorities make scheduling complex. SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 provides a solution: with AI-driven optimization and real-time visibility, it enables adaptive scheduling that dynamically adjusts to current production conditions.

Our first release in 2025 builds upon SYSTEMA’s industry-leading APS framework by integrating a cutting-edge AI solver, a configurable optimization model to balance partially conflicting objectives, and a state-of-the-art benchmarking sandbox environment that empowers engineers, planners, and decision-makers to streamline scheduling, reducing complexity while ensuring maximum utilization of critical resources.

Industrial Challenges in High-Mix, High-Volume Production

Semiconductor manufacturing scheduling is not just about optimizing equipment utilization— it’s about balancing multiple, often conflicting production objectives while meeting customer demands, ensuring process quality, and respecting operational constraints.

SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 is designed to address these and other key industrial challenges:

  • Equipment Downtime: Planned maintenance, tool failures, and engineering holds introduce high variability into production schedules when not being accounted for properly.
  • Complex Process Requirements: Advanced semiconductor nodes, custom wafer requirements, and multi-step lithography add significant scheduling complexity also including secondary and tertiary production factors such as pods and reticles.
  • Balancing Throughput and Yield: Maximizing throughput while maintaining high yield presents a critical challenge, as scheduling decisions must carefully navigate WIP flow constraints to prevent bottlenecks, excessive cycle times, or process inefficiencies that could compromise product quality.
  • Managing Bottlenecks: Limited tool availability, frequent requalification cycles, and competing production demands create significant constraints, requiring intelligent scheduling strategies to prevent capacity imbalances, minimize idle time, and ensure continuous fab operations.
  • Scheduling Transparency: The absence of real-time scheduling decision visibility forces line control to rely on reactive adjustments rather than proactive optimization. This leads to inefficiencies, missed deadlines, and suboptimal resource utilization.

Key Innovations & Enhancements in SYSTEMA APS v2025.1

SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 introduces a multitude of enhancements designed to tackle the complexities of semiconductor scheduling. By combining AI-driven optimization, multi-criteria balancing of schedule priorities, and advanced benchmarking to measure impact of scheduling strategies, this release provides engineers and production planners with unprecedented control of scheduling workflows. These innovations enhance decision-making agility, optimize resource allocation, and ensure greater alignment with real-time production requirements.

Below are some key highlights of this release:

Multi-Criteria Optimization with Weighted Dispatch Rules

The new release further evolves our AI-enhanced scheduling engine to dynamically balance multiple scheduling objectives, including reticle availability, setup minimization, due date adherence, or time link constraints. With new configurable priority weights, line control engineers can adjust scheduling dynamics in real-time to accommodate shifting production demands and changing business needs.

Image of UI for Priority Schema Editor

Figure 1: Combine and balance multiple objectives to meet production and business objectives

Enhanced flow control mechanisms ensure smooth WIP movement while proactively preventing bottlenecks. By integrating adaptive balanced rule-based optimization, SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 enhances scheduling agility, enabling fabs to make smarter, data-driven scheduling decisions.

Benchmarking and Comparative Scheduling Analysis

Optimizing production scheduling requires continuous evaluation of different strategies to determine the most effective approach. SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 introduces a comprehensive benchmarking module that allows users to compare multiple scheduler configurations, analyze scheduling performance metrics, and make data-driven decisions to enhance operational efficiency.

This module enables side-by-side comparisons of different scheduling algorithms, dispatch rules, and optimization parameters, helping fabs identify the configuration that best aligns with their production goals. Users can assess key KPIs such as cycle time, tool utilization, WIP balancing, and on-time delivery performance, providing a clear understanding of how different scheduling strategies impact overall efficiency.

Image of APS sandbox environment with process flow diagram depicting exploration process for optimizing line control

Figure 2: Use a sandbox environment to explore new ideas for optimized line control

Custom Context Attributes for Adaptive Scheduling

In semiconductor manufacturing, rigid scheduling models often fail to capture the complex, real-time conditions of the production floor. SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 introduces custom context attributes, allowing users to define scheduling rules that adapt dynamically to WIP conditions, equipment status, and process constraints, ensuring greater flexibility and precision in scheduling decisions.

By incorporating user-defined attributes, line control engineers can fine-tune prioritization strategies and improve scheduling efficiency. These attributes can be applied to lots, equipment, processes, and operational constraints, providing a richer data set for decision-making.

Advanced KPI Tracking & Scheduling Performance Analytics

The introduction of a revamped KPI framework in SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 provides fabs with enhanced visibility into scheduling performance, enabling real-time monitoring of key production metrics such as cycle time, tool utilization, WIP distribution, and dispatch adherence. The system helps identify inefficiencies, track scheduling deviations, and pinpoint areas for optimization.

With an extendable architecture, the framework supports customized KPIs, allowing fabs to define and track metrics specific to their operational goals, such as lot aging, qualification expiration, or process variability. These insights empower production planners to fine-tune scheduling strategies, improve forecasting accuracy, and ensure alignment with factory-wide efficiency targets. Over time, this data-driven approach leads to greater scheduling precision, optimized WIP flow, and enhanced overall fab performance.

Conclusion: Transforming Semiconductor Production with AI-Driven Scheduling

SYSTEMA APS v2025.1 represents a major leap forward in automated semiconductor scheduling. With its built-in AI-enhanced optimization engine and multi-criteria planning, it helps semiconductor manufacturers achieve higher production efficiency, greater scheduling transparency, and improved tool utilization. Ready to take your scheduling performance to the next level? Schedule a demo today and experience the future of semiconductor scheduling!