Industrial Engineering Journal ›› 2012, Vol. 15 ›› Issue (5): 26-32.

• practice & application • Previous Articles     Next Articles

eM-Plant-Based Simulation Method for Optimal Scheduling of Single-Arm Cluster Tools with Wafer Revisiting

  

  1. School of Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China
  • Online:2012-10-31 Published:2012-11-15

Abstract: For some wafer fabrication processes in cluster tools, wafer revisiting is required. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is such a typical revisiting process. It is a challenging problem to schedule a cluster tool for such a process. A study is conducted to schedule single-arm cluster tools to find an optimal schedule of the revisiting process of ALD. To do so, a Petri net model is developed to describe the behavior of the system. With this model, an optimal schedule can be obtained from very limited number of candidate schedules by just comparing the cycle time of these schedules. Based on the Petri net model, a simulation system is developed by using eM-Plant platform such that the cycle time of a schedule for the revisiting process can be efficiently obtained. In this way, given the parameters of the system for the revisiting process, an optimal schedule can be efficiently found. Illustrative examples are given to show the application of the proposed method.

Key words: cluster tools, scheduling, wafer fabrication, revisiting process, simulation