A multistage manufacturing process (MMP) consists of several consecutive process stages, each of which has multiple machines performing the same functions in parallel. A manufacturing path (simply referred to as path) is defined as an ordered set indicating a record of machines assigned to a product at each process stage of an MMP. An MMP usually produces products through various paths. In practice, multiple machines in a process stage have different operational performances, which accumulate during production and affect the quality of products. This study proposes a heuristic approach to derive the golden paths that produce products whose quality exceeds the desired level. The proposed approach consists of the searching phase and the merging phase. The searching phase extracts two types of machine sequence patterns (MSPs) from a path dataset in an MMP. An MSP is a subset of the path that is defined as an ordered set of assigned machines from several process stages. The two extracted types of MSPs are: (1) superior MSP, which affects the production of superior-quality products, and (2) inferior MSP, which affects the production of inferior-quality products, called inferior MSP. The merging phase derives the golden paths by combining superior MSPs and excluding inferior MSPs. The proposed approach is verified by applying it to a hypothetical path dataset and the semiconductor tool fault isolation (SETFI) dataset. This verification shows that the proposed approach derives the golden paths that exceed the predefined product quality level. This outcome demonstrates the practical viability of the proposed approach in an MMP.

多阶段制造过程（MMP）由几个连续的过程阶段组成，每个阶段都有多台并行执行相同功能的机器。制造路径（简称路径）定义为有序集，表示在MMP的每个处理阶段分配给产品的机器的记录。MMP通常通过各种途径生产产品。实际上，一个过程阶段中的多台机器具有不同的操作性能，这些性能在生产过程中会累积并影响产品质量。这项研究提出了一种启发式方法，以得出生产质量超过所需水平的产品的黄金路。所提出的方法包括搜索阶段和合并阶段。搜索阶段从MMP中的路径数据集中提取两种类型的机器序列模式（MSP）。MSP是路径的子集，它定义为来自多个过程阶段的有序分配的机器集。MSP的两种提取类型是：（1）上等MSP，它会影响优质产品的生产；（2）下等MSP，它会影响劣质产品的生产，称为下等MSP。合并阶段通过合并上级MSP并排除下级MSP得出黄金路径。通过将其应用于假设路径数据集和半导体工具故障隔离（SETFI）数据集，对所提出的方法进行了验证。该验证表明，所提出的方法得出了超出预定义产品质量水平的黄金路径。