Method to provide common support for multiple types of solvers for matching assets with demand in microelectronics manufacturing

Claim 1

A computer implemented decision support method which matches assets with demands to determine which demands can be met in what time frame, identifies production activities necessary to meet the demand, and creates a projected supply plan to generate different outputs for use in generating a production plan, comprising the steps of: establishing a first comprehensive detailed data base to represent and store production specification information that includes manufacturing specifications, asset status, and business guidelines; establishing a second comprehensive detailed data base to represent and store matching solutions including all required manufacturing activities, their quantity, and their start date, wherein the solutions are produced by iteratively selecting and running any of a set of solvers; capturing and storing core production specification information from various sources and storing them in said first comprehensive detailed data base in a single format and level of detail; specifying initial production specification information from said first comprehensive detailed data base; iteratively selecting and running one or more of said set of solvers based upon examination of previous iteration results, said set of solvers commonly accessing the initially specified or a newly specified production specification information from said first comprehensive detailed data base, said set of solvers including: Advanced Material Requirements Planning (AMRP) that uses a series of integrated Linear Programming and MRP methods to explode demand backwards through a bill of material and assets across multiple manufacturing facilities, Best Can Do (BCD) that matches demand against manufacturing capability across a bill of material supply chain and indicates when end item customer demand is satisfied, and Projected Supply Planning (PSP) that executes a forward flush of starts and work in progress and compares projected supply with demand; generating different outputs based on said iteratively selecting and running step for each solver; and determining a production plan based on one or more of the different outputs generated by said iteratively selecting and running step, wherein the different outputs of said set of solvers and said production plan are stored in common data areas of said second comprehensive detailed data base in a common format that is accessible by other solvers and other applications.