Dynamic photo stepper dispatching/scheduling in wafer fabrication

As semiconductor manufacturers automate every aspect of production, the need for a sophisticated manufacturing scheduling system increases. The scheduler must be intelligent enough to consider high complexity, robust enough to react to any sudden changes, and fast enough to process a request within seconds. Among several areas in semiconductor manufacturing, photo is one of the most challenging because of its complexity and the dynamic nature of the photo area. This paper presents the development and implementation of a successful photo dispatching and scheduling system. Our scheduler was developed by a very small group that is very close to the work floor itself and is comparatively simple. This simplicity is really the strength of our scheduler as it considers all of the important variables while maintaining amazing speed and responsiveness