TY - JOUR
T1 - Efficient Approach to Failure Response of Process Module in Dual-Arm Cluster Tools with Wafer Residency Time Constraints
AU - Qiao, Yan
AU - Zhang, Siwei
AU - Wu, Naiqi
AU - Zhou, Mengchu
AU - Li, Zhiwu
AU - Qu, Ting
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received December 25, 2018; accepted February 9, 2019. Date of publication March 14, 2019; date of current version February 17, 2021. This work was supported in part by the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) of Macau under Grant 106/2016/A3, Grant 005/2018/A1, Grant 0017/2019/A1, and Grant 011/2017/A, and in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61803397 and Grant 61673123. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor W. Shen. (Corresponding author: Naiqi Wu.) Y. Qiao and S. W. Zhang are with the Institute of Systems Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau 999078, China (e-mail: yqiao@must.edu.mo; zhangsiwei@gmail.com).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 IEEE.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - In semiconductor manufacturing, a process module (PM) failure in cluster tools (CTs) happens from time to time. To effectively operate a CT, such a failure should be handled in a proper and timely manner. This issue becomes much more complicated because wafer residency time constraints (WRTCs) must be met to ensure the quality for some wafer fabrication processes. With such constraints, if a tool is operated under a periodic schedule and a PM fails, it is desired that the tool can still operate under a periodic schedule if it is possible. Nevertheless, the periodic schedule after a PM failure must be different from that before its failure since in this case the tool is degraded. Thus, there must be a transient process between them. It is a great challenge to operate a tool such that it can go through such a transient process with WRTCs being always satisfied. This paper aims to solve this problem by proposing PM failure response policies which can successfully transfer a CT to the feasible schedule after failure from the one before a failure. Then, efficient algorithms are developed to improve these response policies. The proposed policies are composed of simple control laws such that they can be realized in real time and online. Illustrative examples are presented to show their applications.
AB - In semiconductor manufacturing, a process module (PM) failure in cluster tools (CTs) happens from time to time. To effectively operate a CT, such a failure should be handled in a proper and timely manner. This issue becomes much more complicated because wafer residency time constraints (WRTCs) must be met to ensure the quality for some wafer fabrication processes. With such constraints, if a tool is operated under a periodic schedule and a PM fails, it is desired that the tool can still operate under a periodic schedule if it is possible. Nevertheless, the periodic schedule after a PM failure must be different from that before its failure since in this case the tool is degraded. Thus, there must be a transient process between them. It is a great challenge to operate a tool such that it can go through such a transient process with WRTCs being always satisfied. This paper aims to solve this problem by proposing PM failure response policies which can successfully transfer a CT to the feasible schedule after failure from the one before a failure. Then, efficient algorithms are developed to improve these response policies. The proposed policies are composed of simple control laws such that they can be realized in real time and online. Illustrative examples are presented to show their applications.
KW - Cluster tools (CTs)
KW - failure response
KW - scheduling
KW - semiconductor manufacturing
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U2 - 10.1109/TSMC.2019.2899590
DO - 10.1109/TSMC.2019.2899590
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85101143120
SN - 2168-2216
VL - 51
SP - 1612
EP - 1629
JO - IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems
JF - IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems
IS - 3
M1 - 8667426
ER -