Petri net modeling combined with heuristic search provides a new scheduling method for Integrated Circuits (IC) manufacturing systems.The method includes two steps.First
it formulates the scheduling problem with extended timed-place Petri net model.Second
with the help of heuristic function to limit the search space
it applies a search algorithm to reachability graph of the Petri net model to find an optimal or near optimal feasible schedule in terms of the firing sequence of the transitions.Introducing the test arc to traditional timed-place Petri net
this paper proposed a new Petri net
the extended timed-place Petri net.It can concisely represent not only features of IC manufacturing system
such as routing flexibility
shared resources
varied lot sizes
etc.
but also the device maintenance
device priority and operation priority.Therefore
the schedule obtained is more practical.Experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of the method.