Effects of Optimal Supervisor on Scheduling Performance of Multi-cluster Tools

Abstract

Multi-cluster tools are widely used for semiconductor manufacturing. Multi-cluster tools can cause a deadlock due to resource conflicts. The deadlock may cause a serious decrease of throughput and a deterioration of quality of product. Therefore, the deadlock prevention method is necessary. In this paper, the optimal supervisor of multi-cluster tools is derived by reachability analysis of Petri nets for deadlock prevention. The effects of the optimal deadlock-free model is evaluated from the viewpoint of the scheduling performance.