Automation concept for complex production processes

Automation strategies are confronted with two different trends: increasing equipment integration capability into information and material flow concepts, and production process complexity increasing at least at the same speed. In our CIM framework, bottom-up oriented integration of material flow automation is added to traditional top-down oriented production planning, simulating and scheduling scenarios. We introduce a simple mechanism to adjust and control material flow by answering the question of who/which instance is responsible for introducing the basic activity in the production system. There is some evidence (also reported by Hoop and Spearman, 1996) to dedicate this activity to the production equipment (equipment calls for lots). In order to optimize contradictory goals like tool utilization and in-time-delivery, we move from the traditional push principle to a pull principle. At Infineon, a conveyor based transport system running open cassettes is used that covers both interand intra-bay transportation. Its advantages are the (almost) infinite capacity and the immediate start of any transport job. In particular, the concept of direct tool delivery gives evidence that a continuous workflow is a key issue for production optimization. Based on this approach, we introduce an automation concept covering both equipment and transport control by structuring our production system into functional automation layers in order to reduce complexity. Based on this concept, tool and chamber specific equipment set-up as well as on-line parameter calculations (feedforward, feedback) have been implemented fab-wide.