@inproceedings{85a7f5559e45477a864445b65c7add0e,
title = "Close-down process scheduling of wafer residence time-constrained multi-cluster tools",
abstract = "Semiconductor manufacturing industry has adopted multi-cluster tools as wafer fabrication equipment that is extraordinarily pricey but highly attractive owing to their higher productivity than single cluster tools can achieve. A challenging issue is how to schedule these tools. It is especially difficult to schedule their frequently occurring close-down processes subject to wafer residency constraints. Such processes appear frequently as caused by wafer lot switches and preventive and emergency maintenances. They are dynamical and non-cyclic. We analyze the synchronization conditions for multiple robots to perform concurrent activities. Upon these conditions, for the situations that an optimal schedule can be found in the steady state, a linear program model is proposed to find a feasible and optimal schedule for close-down processes. An example shows the application and efficiency of our proposed method.",
keywords = "Cluster tools, robotic manufacturing cells, semiconductor manufacturing automation",
author = "Qinghua Zhu and Mengchu Zhou and Yan Qiao and Naiqi Wu",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 IEEE.; 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2017 ; Conference date: 29-05-2017 Through 03-06-2017",
year = "2017",
month = jul,
day = "21",
doi = "10.1109/ICRA.2017.7989068",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation",
publisher = "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.",
pages = "543--548",
booktitle = "ICRA 2017 - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation",
address = "United States",
}