Petri net modeling and cycle-time analysis of dual-arm cluster tools with wafer revisiting

Naiqi Wu (1) , Feng Chu (2) , Chengbin Chu (3) , Mengchu Zhou (4, 5)

1 Department of Industrial Engineering
2 IBISC - Informatique, Biologie Intégrative et Systèmes Complexes
3 LGI - Laboratoire Génie Industriel - EA 2606
4 Key Laboratory of Embedded System and Service Computing
5 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

There are wafer fabrication processes in cluster tools that require wafer revisiting. If a swap strategy is applied to dual-arm cluster tools handling wafer revisiting, a three-wafer periodical process is formed with three wafers completed in each period. Such a period contains three cycles in a revisiting process and three cycles in a nonrevisiting one. Hence, analysis and scheduling of such tools become very complicated. In this paper, a Petri net (PN) model is developed to describe their operations. Based on it, it is found that, if a swap strategy is applied, such tools are always in a transient state. A systematic method is then presented to analyze their performance. With the help of the proposed PN model, this work, for the first time, derives the optimality conditions of three-wafer period scheduling. Industrial application examples are given to show the results.

Mots clés: Cluster tool; Petri nets (PNs); discrete event system; scheduling; semiconductor manufacturing

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique; Recherche opérationnelle [math.OC]

Naiqi Wu, Feng Chu, Chengbin Chu, Mengchu Zhou. Petri net modeling and cycle-time analysis of dual-arm cluster tools with wafer revisiting. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans, 2013, 43 (1), pp.196--207. ⟨10.1109/TSMCA.2012.2187890⟩. ⟨hal-00735482⟩