An optimal scheduling technique for dual-arm robots in cluster tools with residency constraints

Abstract

Discusses a scheduling technique, for cluster tools, that addresses post-processing residency constraints and throughput requirements. The residency constraints impose a limit on the post-processing time that a material unit spends in a processing module. The technique searches in the time and resource domains for a feasible schedule with a maximum throughput. Several heuristics are designed and added to reduce the complexity of the scheduling algorithm. The resulting schedules are deadlock free, since resources are scheduled according to the times that they are available. Analytical and experimental analyses demonstrate the correctness and efficiency of our proposed technique.