Efficient real-time scheduling of integrated equipment in semiconductor fabrication

This paper presents an efficient approach to real-time scheduling of integrated equipment in semiconductor fabrication. To accomplish high level of automation and flexibility, the supervisory control system of an integrated equipment should comprehend the management of machine failures and deadlock while optimizing equipment utilization. This paper proposes a real-time scheduling approach that can perform scheduling and deadlock management in an efficient way in spite of machine failures. First, we present a novel framework where we decompose deadlock management problem into sub-problems for computational efficiency, and then integrate them with scheduling algorithms. To realize the proposed framework, a resource request matrix representation is introduced to identify deadlock-prone modules, and to apply deadlock management algorithms. We also present algorithms of polynomial complexity to identify deadlock-prone modules, and algorithms to manage deadlock considering machine failures.