Evaluation Of Scheduling Strategies In A Semiconductor Wafer Fab Using Simulation

This book systematically introduces modeling, performance evaluation and applications of Automatic Materiel Handling System (AMHS) in semiconductor manufactucing, and focuses discussion on the coordination of two subsystems. Resources dispatch and optimization are conducted on operational research combined with cases studies. Written in a practical way, it is an essential reference for researchers and engineers in manufacturing and management.

Over the last fifty-plus years, the increased complexity and speed of integrated circuits have radically changed our world. Today, semiconductor manufacturing is perhaps the most important segment of the global manufacturing sector. As the semiconductor industry has become more competitive, improving planning and control has become a key factor for business success. This book is devoted to production planning and control problems in semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities. It is the first book that takes a comprehensive look at the role of modeling, analysis, and related information systems for such manufacturing systems. The book provides an operations research- and computer science-based introduction into this important field of semiconductor manufacturing-related research.

Generally speaking, scheduling is the procedure of mapping a set of tasks or jobs (studied objects) to a set of target resources efficiently. More specifically, as a part of a larger planning and scheduling process, production scheduling is essential for the proper functioning of a manufacturing enterprise. This book presents ten chapters divided into five sections. Section 1 discusses rescheduling strategies, policies, and methods for production scheduling. Section 2 presents two chapters about flow shop scheduling. Section 3 describes heuristic and metaheuristic methods for treating the scheduling problem in an efficient manner. In addition, two test cases are presented in Section 4. The first uses simulation, while the second shows a real implementation of a production scheduling system. Finally, Section 5 presents some modeling strategies for building production scheduling systems. This book will be of interest to those working in the decision-making branches of production, in various operational research areas, as well as computational methods design. People from a diverse background ranging from academia and research to those working in industry, can take advantage of this volume.

This book concentrates on real-world production scheduling in factories and industrial settings. It includes industry case studies that use innovative techniques as well as academic research results that can be used to improve production scheduling. Its purpose is to present scheduling principles, advanced tools, and examples of innovative scheduling systems to persons who could use this information to improve their own production scheduling.

This current book comprises state-of-the-art research results in the field of mechatronics and reliable systems engineering, gathering papers from almost all continents. Since the chapters represent contributions of research scholars who work in both governmental financed institutions and in the business environment, one could infer that they certainly reflect a clear picture of the developments in these cutting-edge sciences. Moreover, the contributions are not limited to mechatronics, as nowadays it has grown to embed all smart technical sciences. Medical applications based on nano-technologies – seemingly the most promising of all newly developed branches – could not be left out of this work. It is our belief that the book is useful to both students, who want to learn from the best scholars (as most of the authors hold a Ph.D. degree and are well-known professors), and to researchers in all areas of smart engineering, who will definitely find here hot topics meant to inspire them in their line of work.

This book systematically discusses the intelligent scheduling problem of complex semiconductor manufacturing systems from theory to method and then to application. The main contents include data-driven scheduling framework of semiconductor manufacturing system, data preprocessing of semiconductor manufacturing system, correlation analysis of performance index of semiconductor production line, intelligent release control strategy, dynamic dispatching rules simulating pheromone mechanism, and load balancing dynamic scheduling of semiconductor production line, performance index-driven dynamic scheduling method of semiconductor production line, scheduling trend of semi-conductor manufacturing system in big data environment. This book aims to provide readers with valuable reference and assistance in the theoretical methods, techniques, and application cases of semiconductor manufacturing systems and their intelligent scheduling.

Illustrated with real-life manufacturing examples, Formal Methods in Manufacturing provides state-of-the-art solutions to common problems in manufacturing systems. Assuming some knowledge of discrete event systems theory, the book first delivers a detailed introduction to the most important formalisms used for the modeling, analysis, and control of manufacturing systems (including Petri nets, automata, and max-plus algebra), explaining the advantages of each formal method. It then employs the different formalisms to solve specific problems taken from today’s industrial world, such as modeling and simulation, supervisory control (including deadlock prevention) in a distributed and/or decentralized environment, performance evaluation (including scheduling and optimization), fault diagnosis and diagnosability analysis, and reconfiguration. Containing chapters written by leading experts in their respective fields, Formal Methods in Manufacturing helps researchers and application engineers handle fundamental principles and deal with typical quality goals in the design and operation of manufacturing systems.