Optimal bidirectional spine layout for overhead material handling systems

Overhead automated material handling systems have become the only material handling solution in semiconductor fabs to achieve zero footprint material handling in the expensive cleanroom floor. This paper provides two rectilinear layout configurations, single-spine and double-spine, for overhead track design. Given the locations of loadports and a pod from-to flow matrix, we determine the rectilinear layout of material flow systems with the objective of minimizing the total loaded travel distances. The optimal single-spine problem can be transformed to a known single-facility layout problem and solved with a linear-time algorithm. The optimal double-spine layout is obtained from the optimal single X-spine and Y-spine and is formulated as an allocation problem. We demonstrate the system designs by a numerical example. The resulting spine layouts are then compared with the Minimum Rectilinear Steiner Tree (MRST) and Shortest Rectilinear Flow Network (SRFN) layouts. MRST layout provides the shortest track length while the SRFN layout guarantees the shortest flow distances. The result shows that spine layout is a potential track layout pattern with respect to simplicity, track lengths and flow distances for overhead flow systems.