Control of a batch-processing machine: a computational approach

Avramidis, Athanassios.N., Healy, K.J. and Uzsoy, R. (1998) Control of a batch-processing machine: a computational approach. International Journal of Production Research, 36 (11), 3167-3181.

Record type: Article

Abstract

Batch processing machines, where a number of jobs are processed simultaneously as a batch, occur frequently in semiconductor manufacturing environments, particularly at diffusion in wafer fabrication and at burn-in in final test. In this paper we consider a batch-processing machine subject to uncertain (Poisson) job arrivals. Two different cases are studied: (1) the processing times of batches are independent and identically distributed(IID), corresponding to a diffusion tube; and (2) the processing time of each batch is the maximum of the processing times of its constituent jobs, where the processing times of jobs are IID, modelling a burn-in oven. We develop computational procedures to minimize the expected long-run-average number of jobs in the system under a particular family of control policies. The control policies considered are threshold policies, where processing of a batch is initiated once a certain number of jobs have accumulated in the system. We present numerical examples of our methods and verify their accuracy using simulation.

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