Title
Deterministic Flow Lines With Applications
Abstract
We demonstrate that flow line models with deterministic service times and an arbitrary arrival process may be exactly decomposed into segments that each exhibit similar behavior. We call the segments channels and demonstrate that this decomposition leads to a recursion for the delay experienced by customers within the system. The consequence, in addition to clearly elucidating the manner in which customers advance, is that the state of a flow line at any time can be completely characterized by a handful of parameters per channel. The recursions and channel decomposition allow us to model a class of state dependent failures that are common in certain cluster tools in semiconductor wafer manufacturing. Using the fact that wafers are typically grouped into batches, we are able to reduce the computation required to simulate the wafer advancement by about 50 times. The models have been tested with data from a clustered photolithography tool in production and provide throughput and process time predictions within 0.5% and 3% of the actual performance, respectively.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1109/TASE.2009.2027222
Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Transactions
Keywords
Field
DocType
assembling,customer services,discrete event simulation,manufacturing systems,photolithography,semiconductor device manufacture,arbitrary arrival process,channel decomposition,clustered photolithography tool,deterministic flow lines,deterministic service times,flow line models,segments channels,semiconductor wafer manufacturing,state dependent failures,wafer advancement,Discrete-event simulation,flow line,photolithography cluster tools,semiconductor manufacturing automation
Mathematical optimization,Batch production,Computer science,Simulation,Algorithm,Communication channel,Flow line,Deterministic system,Throughput,Deterministic system (philosophy),Discrete event simulation,Computation
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
7
2
1545-5955
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
12
1.13
7
Authors
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
James R. Morrison119526.43