High-fidelity rapid prototyping of 300 mm fabs through discrete event system modeling

Traditionally, the semiconductor manufacturing industry has been driven by continuous technological advancement of the underlying production processes . Yet, as the industry matures, mere technology development is no longer su fficient. The effective deployment and exploitation of the system productio n capacity and operational capability become critical for competitive succe ss. Hence, currently, there is an increasing interest towards the developme nt of a control paradigm/ framework that will allow the effective and effic ient deployment and operation of contemporary fabs, including the upcoming 300 mm fab. The research program presented in this paper seeks to define a detailed modeling and control framework for the real-rime 300 mm fab operat ions, by exploiting and integrating emerging results in Discrete Event Syst ems theory. The proposed approach is demonstrated through a small-scale exa mple, modeling the operation of a 300 mm fab bay. Furthermore, in addition to the development of the formal specification, the presented program will also implement the proposed fab modeling and control framework in a Web-bas ed simulation platform, that will function as a fab (re-)configuration and control synthesis tool for the fab control engineer, and as an educational tool for manufacturing system modeling and control. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scien ce B.V. AH rights reserved.