Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on

Networking, Sensing and Control, Okayama, Japan, March 26-29, 2009

Workflow Design and Management for IC Supply Chain

James C. Chen, Hsin Rau, Cheng-Ju Sun, Hung-Wen Stzeng, and Chia-Hsun Chen

Abstract—This research develops interaction models among model, as shown in figure 2, a fabless design house only
companies in IC supply chain to study the information designs IC and IC foundry companies in IC fabrication sector
integration among them. The main processes of IC supply chain help this design house to produce IC. This diversification and
are IC design, wafer fabrication, wafer probe, IC packaging/ integration structure is the base of IC supply chain of
assembly, and final test. A workflow model between IC design
Taiwan’s IC industry, which is different from that of the other
houses and wafer fabrication plants is developed with focuses on
purchase order, engineering data, and work-in-process status. major players in the world. Famous Taiwan companies such
This model facilitates the standardization and simplification for as TSMC and UMC are wafer foundry companies in the
the information integration interfaces, which could increase the wafer fabrication sector, and ASE is in IC packaging and final
communication efficiency and effectiveness between customers test sectors.
and vendors. Finally, Extricity Alliance software is used in a
case study to demonstrate the interaction process and
information flow between IC design houses and wafer
fabrication plants.

I. INTRODUCTION

S
262 4 13 34 36
ince its invention in the 1950s, semiconductor has Fabless Mask Fabrications Packaging Testing
become one of the most important industries in the 21st
century. Integrated circuit (IC) is the product of 15
semiconductor manufacturing and it consists of five major Substrate

phases: IC design (also called chip design), wafer fabrication, 4

8 19
Lead frame
wafer probe, IC packaging (assembly) and final test, each Wafer Chemicals

phase is a major sub-industry of the whole semiconductor

industry. In addition to these, a complete IC supply chain Fig. 1. IC Supply Chain in Taiwan [1]
also includes mask, raw wafer, chemicals, substrate and lead
frame. Figure 1 shows the IC supply chain in Taiwan, with
the number of companies in each sector.
Integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a major business
model integrating IC design and manufacturing (including
wafer probe, IC packaging and final test). This has been a
successful business model since it was established in the
1950s. Typical companies are Intel of USA, Samsung of
Korea, and Toshiba of Japan, among the others. However,
due to the global competition in technology development,
capital investment, and speed, vertical diversification
business models were developed in the 1970s. In the new

Fig. 2. Evolution of integration and diversification in IC supply chain

Manuscript received October 15, 2008.
James C. Chen is Professor in Department of Industrial and Systems
Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, 200, Chung Pei Rd., IC design plays a key role in semiconductor industry as the
Chung-Li, Taiwan 32023, R.O.C. (corresponding author; phone: application opportunity in the market is mostly determined by
886-3-265-4415; fax: 886-3-265-4499; e-mail: jamesc@ cycu.edu.tw). the success of IC design. IC design is becoming particularly
Hsin Rau is Professor in Department of Industrial and Systems
Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University. (e-mail:
crucial as the technology development moves toward
[email protected]). integration of 3C (computer, consumer, and communication)
Cheng-Ju Sun is a Ph. D. Candidate with the Department of Industrial and products and SOC (system on a chip) design.
Systems Engineering, Chung-Yuan Christian University. (e-mail:
[email protected]).
Taiwan started its research on IC design in 1975 under
Hung-Wen Stzeng received Master degree from Department of Industrial governmental sponsor when Electronic Research and
Engineering, Chung-Yuan Christian University. Services Organization (ERSO) of Industrial Technology
Chia-Hsun Chen received Master degree from Department of Industrial Research Institute (ITRI) brought in the semiconductor
Engineering, Chung-Yuan Christian University.
technology from RCA. The first private company engaged in

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IC design was Syntek Design, established in 1982. Despite its collaboration and is mainly concerned with coordination
small scale in revenue and the number of employees aspects of business processes. Workflow functionality can be
compared to IC fabrication sectors, IC design is regarded as a divided into different coordination and control mechanisms
key industry with ever-increasing importance worth serious [7], [9]. Trappey et al. [14] developed a concentrated, agent-
attention [8]. In 2006, 262 IC design companies contributed based WfMS with a well-defined workflow ontology for SoC
about US$ 10 billion in total revenue, and this makes design management and a free platform JADE was used.
Taiwan’s IC design industry the second largest in the world, Wang et al. [16] applied web service technology to develop
only next to USA. Figure 3 demonstrates the development an agent-based workflow prototype for inter-enterprise
and the revenue of Taiwan’s IC design industry. collaboration. Van der Aalst [17] developed Workflow
process definitions (workflow schemas) to specify which
Revenue (US billion) Growth Rate tasks are required to be executed and in what order (i.e., the
20.0 70%
routing or control flow). Wang et al. [15] described
18.0
60%
Workflow management as a promising technology that
16.0
58.2%
55.3%
15.9
automates the business processes to improve the speed,
14.4
14.0
13.7 50% efficiency and manageability of an organization’s teamwork.
12.5
Huang et al. [11] developed an agent based workflow
12.0
37.1% 10.1
40% management system to manage and coordinate the flow of
10.0
8.2
8.9 work defined by a business process. Huang et al. [12]
30%
8.0 28.7% proposed a JADE-based autonomous workflow management
6.0
5.9
21.1%
23.6%
20%
system for collaborative IC product design.
4.6
3.6 3.8
4.0 13.5%
2.3
9.3% 9.8% 11.0%
10% Hafner et al. [10] discussed many conflicting technical,
2.0 1.5
5.9%
4.7% organizational, legal and domain-level constraints making the
0.0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008(e) 2009(f) 2010(f)
0% implementation of secure, inter-organizational workflows a
very complex task. Bastos et al. [6] presented the structural
Fig. 3. The revenue of Taiwan’s IC design industry [3] and functional enterprise elements involved in business
process, such as enterprise activities, human resources,
Intense global competition and declining profit margins machines, etc. A C-Wf model with object reference model is
have caused most IC design companies to increase their shown in figure 6. Bastos et al. [5] presented an approach to
competitiveness by improving product specification, system describe business process in production systems using
architecture, circuit design flow, and the integration of the workflow concepts. An extension of Unified Model
subsequent processes of wafer fabrication, wafer probe, IC Language (UML) activity Diagram called Workflow Activity
packaging/assembly and final test, that are especially Diagram (WAD) was proposed.
important in the supply structure of vertical diversification
and integration. This study analyzes the interaction between
IC design house and its downstream processes. The aim of
this research is to develop a workflow prototype for inter-
enterprise collaboration with a case study using Extricity
Alliance.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews
related literature. Section 3 describes the process analysis and
modeling. Next, Section 4 presents a case study. Finally,
Section 5 draws conclusions and provides suggestions of
future work.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

The workflow management coalition (WfMC) defines a
workflow management system (WfMS) as a software
application that supports the specification and execution of a
workflow. Figure 4 summarizes the key components, their
relations and terminology used in the WfMC Reference
Model. In order to achieve these objectives, the following
working groups have been established as shown in figure 5
[4]. Fig. 4. The WfMC Generic workflow product structure
Workflow management system supports business process

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 Figure 9 illustrates three classes including boundary, control
and entity for PO process, defined in this study.
IC design houses release PO to their subcontractors.
Typical PO information includes PO number, product list,
release date, quantity, unit price, delivery date, mask
information, process name, trade condition, etc. Figure 10
shows the class diagram of PO.
IC design houses need to provide detailed wafer
engineering data to wafer fab for complex fabrication.
Typical engineering data are product number, chip size, test
key, design rule, wafer acceptance test specification, split
condition, seal ring, wafer type, code layer, option layer,
probe card, output quality assurance procedure, packaging
Fig. 5. Workflow system architecture reference model [4] procedure, etc.
All subcontractors need to feedback WIP report to IC
design houses for the management of production progress, as
the time to market is critical to all IC products. WIP
information includes release date, lot identification, facility
name, flow type, flow name, flow length, current location,
next location, current layer, current quantity, start date,
completion date, etc.

Fig. 6. C-Wf UML class diagram

III. PROCESS ANALYSIS AND MODELING

Based on the WfMC standard, we adopt UML approach for
process definition. This approach consists of three phases:
- Applying use case diagram for process functional
requirements modeling
- Applying class diagram for constructing process Fig. 7. Manufacturing Network of IC Design House [13]
information structure
- Designing sequence diagram for process control flow
This study attends to define the information and interaction
among IC design houses and their downstream companies,
wafer fab especially. The information flow, material flow,
and their interactions are very complexity in IC supply chain,
as shown in figure 7.
The information flow studied here focuses on three parts,
purchase order (PO), engineering data, and Work-in-Process
(WIP) status. In this study, wafer fab, packaging plant and
final test plant which are called subcontractor. IC design
houses need to pass PO and engineering data to all
subcontractors, and these subcontractors need to feedback Fig. 8. Use case diagram for process functional requirements
WIP status to IC design houses. As this study focuses on the
information flow between IC design house and wafer fab,
attention is paid to wafer engineering data, as shown in figure
8 as the use case diagram for process functional requirements.

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 IC Design House Agent IC Design House Service Subcontractor Service Subcontractor Agent

Create PO

transfer (Release PO Action)

signal(Receipt Acknoeledgement)

request (Transfer PO Data)

transfer (Release PO Action)

return (PO Acceptance Action)

response (Send PO Acceptance Action)

Fig. 9. PO process Analysis signal (Receipt Acknowledgement)

return (PO Data Action)

Fig. 11. Sequence Diagram for PO Action Execution

IV. A CASE STUDY

Extricity Alliance can leverage the Internet and emerging
software technologies such as XML to automate shared
business interactions throughout entire value chains of
companies, including customers, suppliers, distributors,
contract manufacturers and third-party logistics providers. [2]
In this study, Extricity Alliance was used to create and
manage mission-critical collaborative business processes
Fig. 10. Class Diagram for PO
such as collaborative planning and engineering and PO
information, as shown in figures 12 and 13. The application
Figure 11 shows the sequence diagram of detailed PO
of Extricity Alliances automates the workflow among IC
action execution in IC supply chain. In design diagram, IC
design houses and their subcontractors. The system
design house agent provides the interface for users from IC
successfully integrates and shares the information by process
design house to input order data. IC design house agent sends
modeling.
PO creation signals to IC design house service. IC design
house service then releases PO action to subcontractor service.
Next, subcontractor service returns a confirmation signal of
receipt acknowledgement to IC design house service.
Subcontractor agent later requests subcontractor service to
transfer PO data. After receiving PO data, subcontractor users
will confirm the order data via subcontractor agent and return
order acceptance to subcontractor service. Subcontractor
service then makes PO response to IC design house service.
Finally, IC design house service returns the result to IC
design house agent.

Fig. 12. PO process using Extricity Alliance

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 software was used to demonstrate the interaction processes
between companies. This study can be extended in several
directions, such as the study of interaction processes between
IC design houses and IC packaging plants, as well as between
IC design houses and final test plants.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Industrial Technology
Research Institute (Contract No. 893K37BH4) for financially
supporting this research.

REFERENCES
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This model facilitates the standardization and simplification
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