Single-machine scheduling with advanced process control constraints

Abstract

With increasing worldwide competition, high technology manufacturing companies have to take great care to lower their production costs and guarantee high quality at the same time. Advanced process control (APC) is widely used in semiconductor manufacturing to adjust machine parameters so as to achieve satisfactory product quality. When there is a conflict between quality and scheduling objectives, quality usually takes precedence. This paper studies the interaction between scheduling and APC. A singlemachine multiple-job-types makespan problem with APC constraints is proved to be NP-hard. For some special cases, optimal solutions are obtained analytically. In more general cases, the structure of optimal solutions is explored. An efficient heuristic algorithm based on these structural results is proposed and compared to an integer programming approach.

Integration of scheduling and advanced process control in semiconductor manufacturing: review and outlook

“…On the other hand, a criticality indicator could be associated to any given process step of each technology, product type (family) or even lot. This criticality indicator (defined by risk or failure mode) should directly come the considered Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and ensure the link to Sampling rules [9], Production scheduling [22] A sampling decision system (SDS) with two-stage decision model [11]; Scheduling with sampling constraints [12], [21]; combined scheduling and real-time control of cluster tools [29], [44] Algorithm to sample, schedule, skip and optimize metrology capacity [13] Run-to-Run (R2R) Scheduling with R2R constraints [14] Scheduling with R2R constraints [15] Sharing information between R2R and dispatching [16]; Covariance matrix for optimizing R2R control [17] Control Plan. Considering these indicators, we can classify equipment/lots into quality categories, e.g.…”

ACO-based scheduling of parallel batch processing machines to minimize the total weighted tardiness

“…However, most related research has not considered the qual-run requirements of APC. We have found only the studies of Cai et al [11] and Patel [12] that incorporated the constraint of process control into scheduling decisions.…”

“…To guarantee that each job is processed only once, the nodes with the same job as the distributed node are also deleted from task k L . Take the problem in Table 1 as an example, and assume that the node (l 11 (4) Initialization of the pheromone on each arc The initial pheromone on each arc is set with the scheduling results obtained by a modified ATC-BATC rule (referred to Section 4), which also guarantees that the scheduling results achieved by the proposed ACO algorithm are no worse than those of the modified ATC-BATC rule. WT − is the TWT obtained with the modified ATC-BATC.…”

Bridging the gap - integrating APC constraints and WIP flow optimization to enhance automated decision making in semiconductor manufacturing

“…Cai et al [1] describe a heuristic solution solving a single-machine multiple-family scenario dealing with count and time-based APC constraints. Li and Ciao [2] use a simulation approach to show the impact of APC required qualification runs on the scheduling performance in semiconductor manufacturing.…”