Operation-dependent maintenance scheduling in flexible manufacturing systems

In highly flexible and highly integrated manufacturing systems such as semiconductor manufacturing, the dynamic interactions between equipment condition, operations executed on the tools and product quality necessitate joint decision-making in maintenance scheduling and production operations. To address these problems, we devise an integrated decision-making policy optimizing a customizable objective function that takes into account operation-dependent degradation models and production target. Optimization was achieved using a metaheuristic method based on the results of discrete-event simulations of operations of the underlying manufacturing system. The method was applied to optimization of maintenance on a generic cluster tool routinely utilized in semiconductor manufacturing. The results show that operation-dependent maintenance decision-making outperforms the case where maintenance decisions are made without considerations of operation-dependent degradation dynamics.