Robust Scheduling of Time-Constrained Dual-Arm Cluster Tools With Wafer Revisiting and Activity Time Disturbance
针对半导体制造中晶圆重访和活动时间扰动导致的调度难题，提出一种结合实时控制器和离线调度的鲁棒调度方法，在保证可行性的同时最大化系统生产率。
Wafer revisiting and residency time constraints complicate the scheduling problem of cluster tools in semiconductor manufacturing. Random disturbance to the activity time in operating a tool further complicates such a scheduling problem. To solve this challenging problem, this paper proposes a robust real-time schedule which consists of a real-time controller (RTC) and an off-line schedule. The former is developed to offset the activity time disturbance such that the wafer sojourn time fluctuation in a process module is minimized. With the RTC, to find the off-line schedule, necessary and sufficient schedulability conditions under which a feasible schedule exists are derived and these conditions can be easily checked. Then, the off-line schedule can be efficiently found by the proposed algorithms based on nondisturbed activity time if a feasible schedule exists. With the obtained real-time schedule, it is shown that the productivity of the system is maximized. Finally, examples are used to illustrate the proposed approach.