A Spatial Adaptation Procedure for Determining Robust Dispatching Rule in Wafer Fabrication

공간적응절차를 통한 웨이퍼 가공 공정의 로버스트한 작업배정규칙 결정

In traditional approaches to scheduling problems, a single dispatching rule was used by all machines in a system. However, since the situation of each machine generally differs from those of other machines, it is reasonable to apply a different dispatching rule to each machine responding to its given situation. In this regard, we introduce the concept of spatial adaptation and examine its effectiveness by simulation. In the spatial adaptation, each machine in a system selects an appropriate dispatching rule in order to improve productivity while it strives to be in harmony with other machines. This study proposes an adaptive procedure which produces a reliable dispatching rule for each machine beginning with the bottleneck machine. The dispatching rule is composed of several criteria of which priorities are adaptively weighted. The weights are learned for each machine through systematic simulations. The simulations are conducted according to a Taguchi experimental design in order to find appropriate sets of criteria weights in an efficient and robust way in the context of environmental variations. The proposed method was evaluated in an application to a semiconductor wafer fabrication system. The method achieved reliable performance compared to traditional dispatching rules, and the performance quickly approached the peak after learning for only a few bottleneck machines.