A New Scheduling Algorithm for Semiconductor Manufacturing Process

반도체 제조공정을 위한 새로운 생산일정 알고리즘

A new scheduling algorithm for large scale semiconductor processes is addressed. The difficulties of scheduling for semiconductor fabrication processes are mainly due from repeating production of wafers that experience reentrant flows. Sequence branch algorithm (SBA) is proposed for large real scheduling problems when all processing times are deterministic. The SBA is based on the reachability graph of Petri net of which the several defects such as memory consumption and system deadlock are complemented. Though the SBA shows the solution deviating a little from the optimal solution of mixed integer programming, it is adjustable for large size scheduling problems. Especially, it shows a potential that is capable of handling commercial size problems that are intractable with mathematical programming.