US 12,287,624 B2
Time constraint management at a manufacturing system
David E Norman, Bountiful, UT (US); Fumio Kawada, Kakamigahara (JP); and Yuh Lin Ng, Kallang / Whampoa (SG)
Assigned to Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US)
Filed by APPLIED MATERIALS, INC., Santa Clara, CA (US)
Filed on Jul. 27, 2020, as Appl. No. 16/939,772.
Prior Publication US 2022/0026891 A1, Jan. 27, 2022
Int. Cl. G05B 19/418 (2006.01); H01L 31/18 (2006.01)
CPC G05B 19/41885 (2013.01) [G05B 19/41805 (2013.01); G05B 19/4183 (2013.01); G05B 19/41865 (2013.01); H01L 31/1892 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
receiving a first request to initiate a set of operations to be run for a queue of substrates at a manufacturing system, wherein each of the set of operations corresponds to a respective substrate process of a set of substrate processes, and wherein one or more operations of the set of operations have one or more time constraints;
identifying a first plurality of candidate substrates of the queue of substrates that are to be processed during the set of operations;
determining a first simulation time period for a first simulation of the set of operations, wherein a size of the first simulation time period corresponds to at least an amount of time associated with a largest time constraint window of a combined set of time constraint windows corresponding to the one or more time constraints prompted by an initiating operation of the set of operations;
running the first simulation of the set of operations to simulate each respective substrate process of the set of substrate processes for the first plurality of candidate substrates over the first simulation time period, wherein the first simulation simulates the set of operations and a condition of an environment of one or more manufacturing equipment during processing according to the one or more operations, and wherein the first simulation generates a first simulation output indicating a first number of candidate substrates that were successfully processed during each of the simulated set of operations to reach an end of the first simulation time period in view of the one or more time constraints;
obtaining a second simulation output by running a second simulation of the successfully processed candidate substrates included in the first simulation output;
performing a verification process by determining whether each successfully processed candidate substrate identified in the first simulation output is included in the second simulation output; and
responsive to determining that each successfully processed candidate substrate identified in the first simulation output is included in the second simulation output, initiating the set of operations at the manufacturing system to process the first number of candidate substrates from the queue of substrates according to each respective substrate process of the set of substrate processes over a time period corresponding to the first simulation time period.