System and method for dispatching lot
AssigneeTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
InventorsRen-Chyi You, An-Wei Peng, Chang-Zong Liu, Yuang-Tsung Chen
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Abstract
A method is disclosed that includes the operations below: comparing an arrival time of a lot arrived at a process stage of N process stages with a processing time, determining whether one of tools at the process stage has a remain operation time which is equal to, or less than and closest to the arrival time, when a first tool of the tools has a first remain operation time which is equal to, or less than and closest to the arrival time, processing the lot with the first tool of the tools in the process stage after dispatching the lot to the processing stage, and generating at least one semiconductor device from the lot based on the comparing, determining and processing.
Claims20
A method, comprising:
- comparing, by a processing unit, an arrival time of a lot arrived at a process stage of N process stages with a processing time, N being a positive integer,
- wherein the processing time is a time interval in which the lot is predetermined to be processed at the process stage;
- determining whether one of tools at the process stage has a smallest lost time of a plurality of lost times, wherein the plurality of lost times are time differences between the arrival time and a plurality of remain operation times of the tools,
- when a first tool of the tools has the smallest lost time, processing the lot with the first tool of the tools in the process stage after dispatching the lot to the process stage;
- and
- generating at least one semiconductor device from the lot based on the comparing, determining and processing.
A system, comprising:
- a storage unit configured to store a process flow for a super hot run (SHR), wherein the process flow comprises process stages, and each of the process stages comprises a plurality of tools;
- and
- a processing unit configured to determine that arrival times of the SHR arrived at N process stages are less than processing times of the SHR predetermined to be processed at the N process stages, and configured to set a first tool of the plurality of tools at each one of the N process stages to process the SHR to generate at least one semiconductor device from the SHR,
- wherein the processing unit is further configured to set the first tool having a smallest lost time of a plurality of lost times,
- wherein the plurality of lost times are time differences between a plurality of remain operation time of the plurality of tools at a corresponding process stage of the N process stages and the arrival time of the SHR arrived at the corresponding process stage of the N process stages.
A non-transitory computer readable medium for performing a method, the method comprising:
- pre-dispatching a lot for N process stages based on arrival times of the lot arriving at the N process stages and processing times of the lot predetermined to be processed at the N process stages, wherein the lot is configured to be processed by a first tool, assigned by a processing unit, of tools at each one of the N process stages, and the first tool has a smallest lost time of a plurality of lost times,
- wherein the plurality of lost times are time difference between a plurality of remain operation time of the tools at each one of the N process stages and the arrival time of the lot arrived at each one of the N process stages;
- detecting whether a tool event associated with changing a remain operation time of a second tool of the tools at a corresponding process stage of the N process stages is triggered, wherein a first arrival time of the lot arrived at the corresponding process stage is equal to or greater than the remain operation time of the second tool;
- when the tool event is triggered, re-dispatching the lot to the second tool of the tools at the corresponding process stage;
- and
- after the re-dispatching, processing the lot with the second tool, assigned by the processing unit, in order to generate at least one semiconductor device from the lot.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.