Using a Multiagent Scheduling System for Dedicated Machine Constraint in Semiconductor Manufacturing

We present a multiagent scheduling (MS) system to tackle the dedicated machine constraint in this paper. The dedicated machine constraint is one of the new issues of the photolithography machinery due to natural bias. Natural bias will impact the alignment of patterns between different photolithography layers. The dedicated machine constraint is the most important challenge to improve productivity and fulfill the request for customers in semiconductor manufacturing today. In this paper, the proposed MS system is based on a resource schedule and execution matrix (RSEM) and keeps the load balancing among photolithography machines during each scheduling step according to the current load among the photolithography machines in the production line. We describe the prototype system including the agents and the coordination strategies in the paper. We also demonstrate the simulation result that validated the proposed MS system.