Modeling, analysis and control of dual-arm cluster tools with residency time constraint and activity time variation based on Petri nets

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1-2012

Abstract

Because of residency time constraints and activity time variation of cluster tools, it is very difficult to operate such integrated semiconductor manufacturing equipment. This paper addresses their real-time operational issues. To characterize their schedulability and achieve the minimum cycle time at their steady-state operation, Petri net (PN) models are developed to describe them, which are very compact, and independent of wafer flow pattern. It is due to the proposed models that scheduling cluster tools is converted into determining robot wait times. A two-level operational architecture is proposed to include an offline periodic schedule and real-time controller. The former determines when a wafer should be placed into a process module for processing, while the latter regulates robot wait times online in order to reduce the effect of activity time variation on wafer sojourn times in process modules. Therefore, the system can adapt to activity time variation. A cluster tool derived as a not-always-schedulable system by the existing methods is shown to be always-schedulable by using the proposed novel method. © 2012 IEEE.

Identifier

84859753478 (Scopus)

Publication Title

IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1109/TASE.2011.2178023

ISSN

15455955

First Page

446

Last Page

454

Issue

2

Volume

9

Grant

60974098

Fund Ref

National Natural Science Foundation of China

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