A fast rescheduling method in semiconductor manufacturing allowing for tardiness and scheduling stability

Abstract

In semiconductor manufacturing, rescheduling problems are extremely difficult to solve in real time due to the high frequency of disturbances that occur approximately every minute. This paper proposes a new approach to online manufacturing rescheduling. Unlike the traditional methods to have a scheduling process again, we (1) revise the existing schedule to keep high schedule stability based on message passing rescheduling with operation sorting; and (2) during the manufacturing process, improve the performance of the revised schedule with the introduction of a quick local search on semi-critical paths. In actual problems with about 200,000 processes, this method can effectively accommodate disturbances in less than 1 second, and a better schedule can be obtained in less than 1 minute. This method has been demonstrated to be more effective than conventional dispatching-rule methods, some of which have been actually applied in many facilities, because it offers higher schedule stability and fewer violations of due dates