Scheduling plays a vital role in optimizing the performance of wafer fabrication facilities. Order Release Control (ORC) policy is a key component of scheduling, as it determines the type, quantity, and timing of new orders released into the system. Over the years, several ORC policies have been developed specifically for semiconductor wafer fabrication. Evaluating these policies for their performance efficiency is essential, as it provides valuable decision support for practitioners. This paper compares the performance of 17 existing ORC policies designed for semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities, focusing on three due date-based performance measures: with the objective of minimizing Total Weighted Earliness/Lateness (TWE/L) and Total Weighted Tardiness (TWT) and maximizing the On-Time Delivery (OTD) rate. The MIMAC test bed dataset, also known as the Mini Fab or Intel Mini Fab, is used to develop the simulation model of wafer fabrication, and simulation experiments are conducted using Arena simulation software. The simulation results reveal that the Work-In-Process Load Control (WIPLCtrl) policy is the best-performing policy for minimizing TWE/L, while the Parametric Workload Regulating (PWR) policy is the best-performing policy for each of the minimizing TWT and maximizing OTD rate. It appears that no single ORC policy emerged as the best-performing policy across all three performance measures. Therefore, an average ranking approach is employed to assess the overall effectiveness of each of the ORC policy. The final average rankings identify Starvation Avoidance (SA), Constant Work-In-Process (CONWIP), and Revised CONWIP (RCONWIP) as the best-performing policies, while Total Cycle Time (TOTAL_CT) and Constant Load (CONLOAD) are the worst-performing.