The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Technical decision · 1996–2001
Samsung's SLIM cut chip cycle times from 80 days to under 30
Between 1996 and 1999 Samsung rolled SLIM scheduling across all its fabs, cutting DRAM cycle times from 80+ to under 30 days and capturing about $1B in sales.
Samsung Electronics
the move
DRAM prices decline steadily, so the speed of the fab determines how much revenue each wafer captures before the price falls again.
SLIM is a set of methodologies and scheduling applications: target cycle times and WIP levels for individual steps, heuristic algorithms for factory-floor scheduling, and optimization-based capacity analysis.
Between 1996 and 1999 Samsung Electronics implemented SLIM in all its semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Cycle times to fabricate DRAM devices fell from more than 80 days to less than 30, which enabled about $1 billion in additional sales revenue.
why it works
- Step-level targets made the bottleneck visible
- Scheduling heuristics turned targets into daily decisions
- Optimization balanced capacity before it became a constraint
- Speed directly captured revenue in a falling-price market
what transfers
In a product whose price falls weekly, throughput speed is revenue: managing cycle time and WIP per manufacturing step converts a factory floor into a fast, predictable cash engine.
what came after
The work was a 2001 Franz Edelman Award finalist. Samsung's Interfaces paper reported the cycle-time reduction from over 80 days to under 30 and the additional roughly $1 billion in sales revenue attributable to the program.
references
- SLIM: Short Cycle Time and Low Inventory in Manufacturing at Samsung Electronics
- SLIM: Short Cycle Time and Low Inventory in Manufacturing at Samsung Electronics
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