A cell formation approach based on cluster analysis is developed for the configuration of manufacturing cells. Cell formation, which is to group machines and parts into machine cells and the associated part families, is implemented to add the flexibility and efficiency to manufacturing systems. In order to develop an efficient clustering procedure, this paper proposes a cluster analysis-based approach developed by incorporating and modifying two cluster analysis methods, a hierarchical clustering and a non-hierarchical clustering method. The objective of the proposed approach is to minimize intercellular movements and maximize the machine utilization within clusters. The proposed approach is tested on the cell formation problems and is compared with other well-known methodologies available in the literature. The result shows that the proposed approach is efficient enough to yield a good quality solution no matter what the difficulty of data sets is, ill or well-structured.

Decisions on reliability screening rules and burn-in policies are determined based on the estimated reliability. The variability in a semiconductor manufacturing process does not only causes quality problems but it also makes reliability estimation more complicated. This study investigates the nonuniformity characteristics of integrated circuit reliability according to defect density distribution within a wafer and between wafers then develops optimal burn-in policy based on the estimated reliability. New reliability estimation model based on yield information is developed using a spatial stochastic process. Spatial defect density variation is reflected in the reliability estimation, and the defect densities of each die location are considered as input variables of the burn-in optimization. Reliability screening and optimal burn-in policy subject to the burn-in cost minimization is examined, and numerical experiments are conducted.