Scheduling Semiconductor Wafer Fabrication Using a New Harmony Search Algorithm Based on Receipt Priority Interval

For the scheduling problem of Semiconductor wafer fabrication (SWF), a new Dispatching rule based on the load balance (DRLB) is proposed. Further, a new Harmony search (HS) algorithm based receipt priority interval (HS_rpi) is presented to minimize the mean cycle time. A kind of chaotic sequence is used as the harmony vector. Then, a conversion method is designed to convert the real number harmony vector to the mixed vector representing the priorities of all receipts and the algorithm parameters. In order to increase the algorithm robustness and decrease the scale of the scheduling problem, based on receipt priority interval and DRLB, we give a special conversion method used to convert the above mixed vector to the solution of the scheduling problem of SWF. Computational simulations based on the practical instances validate the proposed algorithm.