238 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING, VOL. 25, NO.
2, MAY 2012
Dynamic-Moving-Window Scheme for
Virtual-Metrology Model Refreshing
Wei-Ming Wu, Student Member, IEEE, Fan-Tien Cheng, Fellow, IEEE, and Fan-Wei Kong
Abstract—Virtual metrology (VM) is a method to conjecture
manufacturing quality of a process tool based on data sensed
from the process tool without physical metrology operations.
Historical data is used to produce the initial VM models, and
then these models are applied to operating in a process drift
or shift environment. The accuracy of VM highly depends on
the modeling samples adopted during initial-creating and online-
refreshing periods. Since large resources are required, design-of-
experiments may not be performed. In that case, how could we
guarantee the stability of the models and predictions as they
move into the unknown environment? Conventionally, static-
moving-window (SMW) schemes with a fixed window size are
adopted in the online-refreshing period. The purpose of this
paper is to propose a dynamic-moving-window (DMW) scheme
for VM model refreshing to enhance prediction accuracy. The
DMW scheme adds a new sample into the model and applies
a clustering technology to do similarity clustering. Next, the
number of elements in each cluster is checked. If the largest
number of the elements is greater than the predefined threshold,
then the oldest sample in the cluster with the largest population
is deleted. Both the adaptive-resonance-theory-2 and the newly
proposed weighted-Euclidean-distance methods are applied to do
similarity clustering.
Index Terms—Dynamic-moving-window (DMW) scheme,
model refreshing, static-moving-window (SMW) scheme, virtual
metrology (VM), weighted-Euclidean-distance (WED) method.
I. Introduction
R ECENTLY, a promising technology—denoted virtual
metrology (VM)—has bloomed [1], [2]. The Interna-
tional SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative added VM into
its next-generation factory realization roadmap of the semicon-
ductor industry [3]. The International Technology Roadmap
for Semiconductors also designated VM as one of the focus
areas on factory information and control systems and advanced
process control (APC) [4], [5]. VM can convert sampling
inspection with metrology delay into real-time and online total
inspection. The authors have developed the so-called automatic
Manuscript received October 1, 2011; accepted December 4, 2011. Date of
publication January 9, 2012; date of current version May 4, 2012. This work
was supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan, under
Contracts NSC100-2221-E-006-002 and NSC100-2622-E-006-011-CC2, and
in part by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, under Project AIM-HI. There
are currently patents pending for the work presented in this paper in Taiwan,
the U.S., China, Japan, and Korea with application no. 100147447.
The authors are with the Institute of Manufacturing Information
and Systems, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan
(e-mail: min@super.ime.ncku.edu.tw; chengft@mail.ncku.edu.tw; fwkung@
fs-technology.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSM.2012.2183398
0894-6507/$31.00 
c 2012 IEEE
virtual metrology system (AVM) to implement and deploy the
VM operations automatically [6], [7].
Historical data is used to produce the initial VM models,
and then these models are applied to operating in a process
drift or shift environment. To create a VM model, n sets of
historical data are collected, including process data (Xa , a=
1, 2, . . . , n) from a production tool and the corresponding
metrology data (ya , a= 1, 2, . . . , n) from a metrology tool.
Each set of process data contains individual parameters (from
parameter 1 to parameter p). The linking between the process
and the metrology data of each set should be assured before
considering this set as a valid modeling set. Furthermore, if the
historical data sets possess the correlation across data streams
and across time (i.e., autocorrelation), then the historical data
of a typical entire correlation period should be collected for
modeling so as to improve the modeling and conjecturing
accuracy [8].
Nevertheless, during the initial model-creating phase, it is
impossible to collect all the possible drift or shift samples
simply from historical data; it is also impossible to generate
all the probable drift or shift samples by performing design-of-
experiments (DOEs) because this requires a large amount of
resources. Since DOE may not be performed exhaustively, how
could we guarantee the stability of the models and predictions
while they move into the unknown environment? Furthermore,
during the model-refreshing phase, how could those important
drift or shift samples collected online be added into the set of
model-refreshing samples automatically?
Not many researchers had addressed the issues concerning
model creating or refreshing. Among them, Cheng et al.
[9] proposed the dual-phase VM scheme to solve the online
model-refreshing problem. After the VM model being built
and with the dual-phase VM algorithm [9] running, the drift
or shift samples encountered during manufacturing processes
can be added to the model automatically, in order to enhance
the prediction accuracy of the future VM values. However, the
issue of the size of modeling samples is not considered in [9].
Khan et al. [2], [10] applied a static-moving-window
(SMW) scheme for partial-least-squares (PLSs) modeling with
the regression coefficient matrix being recursively updated
when actual measurement of output is available. The size of
this SMW is found by reaching a tradeoff between the speed
of adaptation of the PLS model (requiring smaller size) and
avoiding any response to noisy data (requiring larger size). In
one approach for the moving window, the number (n) of data
points in X and y remains fixed while old data is replaced by
WU et al.: DYNAMIC-MOVING-WINDOW SCHEME FOR VM MODEL REFRESHING
new ones. Alternatively, some of the DOE data can be retained
while new values of X and y replace the older ones; this second
approach seeks to preserve the richness of the DOE data in
the reformulation [2], [10].
Lynn et al. [11] proposed another SMW modeling scheme,
the so-called weighted-PLS scheme, to virtually measure etch
rates in an industrial plasma etch process. The weights applied
to each sample are determined depending on their relevance
to the sample at the front of the window. The sample weights
vary in accordance with the tool maintenance history to satisfy
two assumptions. First, due to process drift, it is assumed that
samples closer to the front of the window are more relevant
to prediction. Second, it is assumed that samples contained
within the same predictive maintenance (PM) cycle as the
target sample are more relevant than samples from previous
PM cycles. In order to fulfill these assumptions, samples are
first assigned a linearly decreasing weight across the window
length, with the most recent sample given a weight of 1 and the
oldest samples a weight of 0. Next, the weights of the samples
are adjusted according to the number of PM cycles spanned
by the window length. The samples contained in the most
recent PM cycle are first incremented, and older PM cycles
are incremented by less and less amounts progressively.
The window size of all the SMW schemes mentioned above
is fixed with old samples being replaced by new ones. As
such, those important and rare drift or shift samples collected
both in the initial-creating and online-refreshing periods will
be deleted sooner or later. This problem should be studied
and resolved. Thus, a new scheme that keeps the important
and rare samples and deletes the redundant and common ones
should be developed.
The authors presented a preliminary study of a dynamic-
moving-window (DMW) scheme for VM model refreshing
in [12]. The DMW scheme adds a new sample into the
model and applies a clustering technology to do similarity
clustering. Next, the number of elements in each cluster is
checked. If the largest number of elements is greater than the
predefined threshold, then the oldest sample in the group with
the largest population is deleted. The predefined threshold is
set to be three, which will be explained later. In the preliminary
study, the adaptive-resonance-theory-2 (ART2) was applied for
similarity clustering. However, after performance evaluation,
it was found that the number of clusters of the ART2-based
DMW is rather high. The number of clusters should not be
close to that of the window size of model creation, otherwise
the elements in each cluster will be relatively small. Further,
the execution time of ART2 is comparatively high as well.
In this paper, not only the ART2 but also the newly proposed
weighted-Euclidean-distance (WED) methods are applied to
do similarity clustering. The performance (including the num-
ber of clusters and execution times) of the ART2-based DMW
and WED-based DWM are also compared in this paper.
The photo processes of a fifth-generation thin-film transistor
liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) factory are adopted in this
paper to test and compare the conjecture accuracy among the
SMW, ART2-based DMW, and WED-based DMW schemes.
Testing results show that the DMW schemes have better online
conjecture accuracy than the conventional SMW scheme.
239
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Sec-
tion II details the DMW schemes by applying ART2 [13],
[14] and WED. Section III then presents and compares the
experimental results among the SMW, ART2-based DMW, and
WED-based DMW schemes. The implications of experimen-
tal results are also discussed here. Finally, a summary and
conclusions are made in Section IV.
II. DMW Scheme
The conjecture accuracy of VM should be equally good
for the entire possible range of the corresponding actual
metrology. To achieve this goal, the modeling samples should
be scattered over the entire range as equally as possible.
Therefore, the rule of thumb of designing the DMW scheme
is to keep the sample with a small population and delete the
sample with an abundant population within the entire range.
The flowchart of the DMW scheme is shown in Fig. 1 and is
explained as follows.
Step 1) Collect a new sample for modeling.
Step 2) Add the new sample into the modeling samples.
Step 3) Perform similarity clustering.
Step 4) Search for the cluster that has the largest number of
samples.
Step 5) Check whether there are two or more clusters with
the same largest number of samples; if yes, then go
to Step 6, otherwise, jump to Step 7.
Step 6) Find out the cluster (of those two or more) that has
the oldest sample.
Step 7) Check whether there are less than three samples in
the cluster that has the largest number of samples; if
yes, then go to Step 8, otherwise, jump to Step 9.
Step 8) Save this new sample for modeling without purging
any historical sample, and then stop.
Step 9) Save this new sample and purge the oldest sample for
modeling, and then stop.
Intuitively, the historical actual metrology data (y) may be
used as the element to do similarity clustering. However, the
clustering discrimination will not be good enough if merely
applying y as the element for clustering due to the fact
that there may be several different process data sets (Xs)
that produce the same metrology datum (y). To enhance the
clustering discrimination, instead of y, the process data set (X)
should be adopted as the element to do similarity clustering.
Two clustering methods—ART2 [13], [14] and the proposed
WED scheme—are adopted in this paper. Both methods utilize
X as the element to do clustering. They are presented in the
following two sections, respectively.
A. Applying ART2 for Similarity Clustering
ART2 is a kind of unsupervised neural network (NN). It
has the features of both stability and flexibility and is able
to rapidly learn the new characteristics of clusters without
predetermination of the number of clusters. However, the
quality of ART2 clustering crucially depends on the setting
of the vigilance parameter, ρ, of the resonance layer [13].
240 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING, VOL. 25, NO. 2, MAY 2012

under the condition of minimizing intracluster and maximizing

intercluster variations [16]. The ART2 clustering with auto-ρ
method is also adopted in this paper to perform Step 3 of the
DMW scheme.

B. Applying WED for Similarity Clustering

The WED method performed in Step 3 of the DWM scheme
consists of the following three steps.
Step 1) Calculate the weighted correlation coefficient (Wj )
between the jth process parameter, j = 1, 2, . . . , p,
and the real metrology.
Step 2) Calculate the WED (WEDi ) [15] for each model-
ing sample, i = 1, 2, . . . , n.
Step 3) Put all of the WEDi of the modeling samples in
a histogram and calculate the desired number (C)
of clusters by the Sturge’s rule [18], finally divide
the histogram into C clusters.
The details of Steps 1–3 are given below.
Step 1: Calculate the weighted correlation coefficient
(Wj )
r(Xj , y)
Wj = p ,j = 1, 2, . . . , p (1)

r(Xj , y)
j=1

where r(Xj , y) is the correlation coefficient [17] between the

jth process parameters, Xj , and the real metrology values,
 T
y, with Xj = x1,j , x2,j , . . . , xn,j being the j set of in-
dividual
 parameter containing
T n modeling process data, and
y = y1 , y2 , . . . , yn the corresponding set of modeling actual
measurement values. As a result, the weighted-correlation-
coefficient matrix (W) can be expressed as
⎡ ⎤
W1 0 ... 0
⎢ 0 W2 ... 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
W = ⎢ . .. .. .. ⎥
⎣ .. . . . ⎦
0 0 ... Wp
⎡ r(X1 ,y) ⎤

p 0 ... 0
⎢ r(Xj ,y) ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ j=1
⎥
⎢ 0 r(X2 ,y)
... 0 ⎥
⎢ 
p ⎥
⎢ r(Xj ,y) ⎥
= ⎢ ⎥ (2)
⎢ j=1 ⎥
⎢ .. .. .. .. ⎥
⎢ . . . . ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ r(Xp ,y) ⎥
⎣ 0 0 ... 
p ⎦
r(Xj ,y)
j=1

Fig. 1. DMW scheme.
The optimal value of ρ is usually obtained by the try-and-
error method and must be fine-tuned by the user according to
different data sets.
The authors have applied ART2 clustering to create the
metrology data-quality-index (DQIy ) model [16] by the pro-
posed auto-ρ procedure that automatically searches for the
most suitable ρ value. The most suitable ρ is obtained by
finding the shortest distance between each pair of two clusters
where xi,j is the jth process parameter in the ith set of process
data, yi is the ith actual measurement value, i represents the
ith sample, i = 1, 2, . . . , n, and j represents the jth parameter,
j = 1, 2, . . . , p.
Step 2: Calculate the weighted Euclidean distance
(WEDi ). Before the WEDi is constructed, the process data
must be standardized. The equations for standardizing the
process data are
xi,j − x̄j
Z xi,j = , i = 1, 2, ..., n; j = 1, 2, ..., p (3)
σx j
WU et al.: DYNAMIC-MOVING-WINDOW SCHEME FOR VM MODEL REFRESHING 241

TABLE I
VM Conjecture Accuracy of Various Moving Window Schemes for Example 1 (All Positions)
NN MR
MAPE (%) Max Error (%) MAPE (%) Max Error (%)
Pos.
SMW DMW-ART2 DMW-WED SMW DMW-ART2 DMW-WED SMW DMW-ART2 DMW-WED SMW DMW-ART2 DMW-WED
1 1.68 0.23 0.31 5.91 0.41 0.70 2.06 0.46 0.43 4.25 0.97 0.98
2 1.08 0.33 0.37 5.29 1.34 1.65 0.92 0.29 0.32 2.85 0.61 0.68
3 2.18 0.34 0.38 7.42 1.36 1.51 1.39 0.30 0.32 3.90 0.62 0.64
4 1.24 0.41 0.32 3.32 1.15 0.76 1.09 0.40 0.40 2.50 1.04 1.04
5 0.84 0.30 0.43 3.11 0.72 1.04 2.27 0.46 0.46 4.86 0.93 1.42
6 1.62 0.38 0.43 3.26 1.14 0.98 3.92 0.44 0.49 9.35 1.28 1.21
7 0.74 0.52 0.30 2.09 0.97 0.50 2.89 0.34 0.41 7.60 0.76 0.80
8 1.09 0.44 0.35 2.69 1.13 0.88 6.32 0.52 0.47 15.12 0.92 0.98
Mean 1.31 0.37 0.36 4.14 1.03 1.00 2.61 0.40 0.41 6.30 0.89 0.97

The Sturge’s rule is

Group number = 1 + log2 (n) (8)
where n is the number of samples for modeling. The nearest
integer of group number in (8) is adopted as the C value.
Finally, those WEDi , i = 1, 2, . . . , n, are equally divided into
C clusters with

Width of a cluster = [max(WEDi ) − min(WEDi )]/C. (9)

III. Illustrative Examples

Two examples are chosen to be tested and compared. All
Fig. 2. Measurement positions of photo equipment (14.1-in product glass). the experimental data are collected from a photo tool. This
tool is practically operating in a fifth-generation TFT-LCD
1
factory in Taiwan. In Examples 1 and 2, 14.1-in product glass
x̄j = x1,j + x2,j + ... + xn,j (4) is divided into two shots for photo processing. Each shot has
n
eight measurement positions, as depicted in Fig. 2. Shot 2 is

1 
2 
2 
2  used in both examples.
σxj = x1,j − x̄j + x2,j − x̄j + ... + xn,j − x̄j
n −1
(5)
where Zxi,j is the standardized jth process parameter in the ith
set of process data, x̄j is the mean of the jth process data, and
σxj is the standard deviation of the jth process data.
Let Zi = [Zxi,1 , Zxi,2 , ..., Zxi,p ]T be the vector of the ith set
standardized process data. And, the model set of the process
T
parameters is defined as XM = xM,1 , xM,2 , ..., xM,p ,
where xM,j equals x̄j , j = 1, 2, . . . , p, so that each element in
the model set after standardization (also denoted as the stan-
dardized model parameter, ZM,j ) has a value of 0. Restated,
 T
all of the elements in ZM = ZM,1 , ZM,2 , . . . , ZM,p are 0.
Thereafter, the WEDi is expressed as
WEDi = (Zi −ZM ) W I W T (Zi −ZM )T (6)
where I is the identity matrix. Due to all of the elements in
ZM are 0, the WEDi can be simplified as
WEDi = Zi W I W T ZTi . (7)
Step 3: Perform clustering on WEDi by Sturge’s rule.
After all of the WEDi , i = 1, 2, . . . , n, are obtained, they
are first plotted by a histogram. Then, Sturge’s rule [18] is
applied to calculate the desired number (C) of clusters.
According to the physical properties of the photo equipment,
21 key process parameters are chosen, respectively, as inputs
of the conjecture model. The process data were extracted
from time-series-trace data by taking averages of a window
of time period. The conjecture accuracy calculated from the
testing data is quantified by the mean absolute percentage error
(MAPE) [8], [9]. Its formula is represented as follows:
 q
|(ŷi − yi )/y|
i=1
MAPE = × 100% (10)
q
where ŷi is the VM conjecture value, yi is the actual metrology
value, y is the target value, and q is the conjecture sample size.
The closer the MAPE value is to zero, the better the conjecture
accuracy of the model would be.
A. Conjecture Results of Example 1
The purpose of Example 1 is to demonstrate the DMW’s
capability of keeping the golden samples that should be kept
in the model permanently. To begin with, 12 experimental sets
are adopted. Among these 12 sets, Samples 3–9 are especially
chosen to perform a critical-dimension (CD) spread test with
the adjustment of a major parameter (ActProcess Time) on
242
Fig. 3. Samples 95–106 VM conjecture results of various moving window schemes for Example 1. (a) Position 2. (b) Position 8.
the photo equipment. These seven spread-test samples are
so-called the golden samples. Then, 63 additional historical
samples are collected. As a result, 75 sets, which include
12 experimental sets in the front and 63 historical samples
at the back, are adopted as modeling sets to establish the
VM conjecture model. The following 19 sets are utilized to
tune or retrain the VM model by the dual-phase scheme [9]
one by one. Finally, the process data of the 12 experimental
sets (which contains the golden samples) are used again as
the samples for the free-running mode VM conjecturing test,
whereas the corresponding actual metrology values (for CD)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING, VOL. 25, NO. 2, MAY 2012
of those 12 experimental sets are adopted for evaluating the
VM conjecture accuracy.
The SMW, ART2-based DMW, and WED-based DMW
schemes are applied to perform this free-running test. The
eight positions of Shot 2, as shown in Fig. 2, are adopted
for evaluation. Table I presents the VM conjecture accu-
racy of various schemes for all the measurement positions
(1–8) by applying back-propagation NNs and multiregression
(MR). Among those eight positions, the conjecture results of
positions 2 and 8 for various schemes are depicted in Fig. 3.
Observing Fig. 3, the global-similarity-index (GSI) values [19]
WU et al.: DYNAMIC-MOVING-WINDOW SCHEME FOR VM MODEL REFRESHING 243

TABLE II
VM Conjecture Accuracy of Various Moving Window Schemes for Example 2 (All Positions)

Pos. NN MR
MAPE (%) Max Error (%) MAPE (%) Max Error (%)
SMW DMW-ART2 DMW-WED SMW DMW-ART2 DMW-WED SMW DMW-ART2 DMW-WED SMW DMW-ART2 DMW-WED
1 0.90 0.77 0.73 3.38 2.28 2.15 0.83 0.78 0.65 4.18 2.46 2.12
2 0.35 0.37 0.33 2.12 1.09 1.04 0.38 0.38 0.41 2.58 1.08 1.14
3 0.70 0.67 0.67 3.32 1.92 1.70 0.72 0.66 0.70 3.90 1.85 1.76
4 0.59 0.55 0.56 2.13 1.99 1.82 0.66 0.60 0.62 2.20 1.98 1.85
5 0.51 0.58 0.53 1.45 1.59 1.66 0.57 0.62 0.63 1.42 1.81 1.44
6 0.59 0.57 0.56 1.92 1.63 1.48 0.64 0.60 0.60 2.32 1.83 1.55
7 0.55 0.52 0.55 1.56 1.68 1.52 0.58 0.55 0.54 1.82 1.38 1.50
8 0.92 0.87 0.75 2.54 2.42 2.45 0.90 0.87 0.79 3.58 2.37 2.50
Mean 0.64 0.61 0.58 2.30 1.83 1.73 0.66 0.63 0.62 2.75 1.84 1.73

Fig. 4. Key process data (ActProcess Time) of Example 1.

of the SMW scheme at Samples 97–103 are much higher than
the GSI threshold (9), while, those of the ART2-based DMW
and WED-based DMW schemes at Samples 97–103 are both
lower than the GSI threshold. In fact, Samples 97–103 are
the golden Samples 3–9 mentioned above. This phenomenon
indicates that those golden samples have been deleted by
the SMW scheme and are still kept in the VM model by
both the ART2-based DMW and WED-based DMW schemes.
Observing Table I, due to the fact that the golden samples are
missing in the SMW case yet preserved in the DWM cases,
the MAPEs and max errors of the SMW scheme are relatively
larger than those of the DWM schemes. Furthermore, Fig. 4
shows the key process data (ActProcess Time) of Example
1. It obviously indicates that after tuning or retraining 19
samples: 1) all of the golden samples are discarded by the
SMW scheme; 2) golden Samples 4–9 are still kept in the
VM model by the ART2-based DMW; and 3) all of the golden
Samples 3–9 are still kept in the VM model by the WED-based
DMW scheme.
B. Conjecture Results of Example 2
The purpose of Example 2 is to evaluate the performance of
various moving-window schemes for an ordinary running case
by applying the dual-phase VM scheme [9]. In this example,
75 historical samples are collected and adopted as modeling
sets to establish the VM conjecture model. The following 56
sets are utilized to test and tune or retrain the VM model by the
dual-phase scheme [9] one by one. The corresponding actual
244
Fig. 5. Samples 76–131 VM conjecture results of various moving window schemes for Example 2. (a) Position 2. (b) Position 6.
metrology values (for CD) of those 56 samples are used to
evaluate the VM conjecture accuracy.
The SMW, ART2-based DMW, and WED-based DMW
schemes are, again, applied to perform this dual-phase running
test. The eight positions of Shot 2, as shown in Fig. 2, are
adopted for evaluation. Table II presents the VM conjecture
accuracy of various schemes for all the measurement positions
(1–8). Among those eight positions, the conjecture results of
positions 2 and 6 for various schemes are displayed in Fig. 5.
Moreover, a process datum (Lamp Illumination) of Example
2 for all of the 131 samples is depicted in Fig. 6.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING, VOL. 25, NO. 2, MAY 2012
Table II shows that the mean MAPEs and max errors of the
SMW scheme are worse than those of the ART2-based DMW
and WED-based DMW schemes, respectively. Comparing the
accuracy of the ART2-based DMW with that of the WED-
based DMW, the WED-based DMW is slightly better. The
phenomena mentioned above are supported by the results
shown in Figs. 5 and 6.
Observing Fig. 5, the GSI value of the SMW scheme
at Sample 126 is much higher than the GSI threshold (9),
while those of the ART2-based DMW and WED-based DMW
schemes at Sample 126 are both lower than the GSI threshold.
WU et al.: DYNAMIC-MOVING-WINDOW SCHEME FOR VM MODEL REFRESHING
Fig. 6. Process datum (Lamp Illumination) of Example 2.
Further, the GSI value of the ART2-based DMW is slightly
higher than that of the WED-based DMW at Sample 126. As a
result, the prediction error of the SMW at Sample 126 is larger
than those of the ART2-based DMW and WED-based DMW.
Moreover, the prediction error of the ART2-based DMW is
slightly larger than that of the WED-based DMW at Sample
126.
Figure 6 shows the process datum, Lamp Illumination, of
Example 2 for all of the 131 samples. The value of Lamp
Illumination at Sample 126 is: 1) quite different from those
of the modeling samples of the SMW scheme; 2) relatively
similar to Samples 35 and 36 kept in the modeling sets of the
ART2-based DMW scheme; and 3) highly similar with Sample
30 kept in the modeling sets of the WED-based DMW scheme.
Consequently, the phenomena depicted in Fig. 6 support the
results shown in Table II and Fig. 5.
C. Discussion
The execution time of the ART2-based DMW and WED-
based DMW schemes in Examples 1 and 2 takes 0.891 s and
0.030 s on average, respectively. The computer used to test the
execution time is Intel Core 2 CPU 2.13 GHz with 1.48 GB
RAM. Microsoft Windows XP is adopted as the operating
system. Moreover, both of the ART2-based and WED-based
schemes are developed by applying MATLAB 7.6.
With the initial model-creation window size being 75, the
numbers of clusters of the ART2-based DMW and WED-based
DMW schemes in Examples 1 and 2 are 40 and 7, respectively.
245
The number of clusters should not be close to that of the
model-creation window size, otherwise the elements in each
cluster will be relatively small. According to the experience
gained from [16], all the elements in the same cluster sorted
by ART2 have the same properties. To sustain the properties of
each cluster, the minimal number of elements is three (3) [16].
Therefore, the predefined threshold of the number of elements
in each cluster is set to be three as shown in Step 7 of Fig. 1.
Because the execution time and the number of the clusters
of the WED-based DMW scheme perform better than those
of the ART2-based scheme, the WED-based DMW scheme is
recommended to be applied for VM model refreshing.
IV. Conclusion
This paper proposed a DMW scheme for VM model refresh-
ing. The DMW scheme added a new sample into the model
and applied a clustering technology to do similarity clustering.
Next, the number of elements in each cluster was checked. If
the largest number of elements was greater than three, then
the oldest sample in the group with the largest population was
deleted. Two clustering methods ART2 and the proposed WED
were applied in this paper. Process and metrology data of a
photo tool that is practically operating in a fifth-generation
TFT-LCD factory in Taiwan were adopted as the illustrated
examples. Test results showed that the DMW scheme has
better online conjecture accuracy than the SMW scheme.
Further, the execution time of the WED-based DMW scheme
246 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING, VOL. 25, NO. 2, MAY 2012
was at least ten times faster than that of the ART2-based DMW
scheme. Therefore, the WED-based DMW scheme was best
recommended to be adopted for VM model refreshing.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Chi Mei Optoelectronics
Corporation, Taiwan, for providing the raw data of the photo
processes used in the illustrative examples.
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Wei-Ming Wu (S’08) was born in Tainan, Tai-
wan, on March 27, 1981. He received the B.S. de-
gree from the Department of Industrial Engineering
and Management, Taipei University of Technology,
Taipei, Taiwan, in 2004, and the M.S. degree from
the Institute of Manufacturing Engineering, National
Cheng Kung University, Tainan, in 2006. He is
currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Institute
of Manufacturing Information and Systems, National
Cheng Kung University.
His current research interests include factory au-
tomation and virtual metrology for semiconductor manufacturing, key-variable
selection, artificial intelligence, and statistics analysis.
Fan-Tien Cheng (S’87–M’89–SM’98–F’08) re-
ceived the B.S. degree from National Cheng Kung
University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, in 1976, the
Masters degree in 1982 and the Ph.D. degree in
1989 from Ohio State University, Columbus, all in
electrical engineering.
He is currently the Chair Professor of NCKU.
From August 1998 to July 2001, he was the Di-
rector of the Institute of Manufacturing Engineering
(IME), NCKU. He built a web-enabled experimental
manufacturing execution system and a supply chain
information system for integrated circuit packaging. He also established
testing beds for e-diagnostics, equipment-engineering-system, engineering-
chain-management-system, and automatic-virtual-metrology frameworks for
semiconductor manufacturing at IME Automation Laboratory for educational
and research purposes. He is the founder of the e-Manufacturing Research
Center (eMRC), NCKU, and has been the Director of eMRC since January
2008. His current research interests include semiconductor manufacturing
automation, e-manufacturing, virtual metrology, and intelligent PM.
Prof. Cheng received the Senior Scientist Award from the DoD, Taiwan, in
1994, the Kayamori Best Automation Paper Award at the IEEE ICRA in 1999,
the Outstanding Industry-University-Cooperation (IUC) Award from the MoE,
Taiwan, in 2003, the NCKU Distinguished IUC-Professor Award in 2004 and
2008, the Taiwan National Science Council (NSC) Outstanding IUC Award
(as the only awardee) in 2006, the Taiwan NSC Outstanding Research Award
in 2006 and 2009, the University Industry Economy Contribution Award,
Individual Award from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Taiwan,
in 2008, the TECO Award from the TECO Technology Foundation, Taiwan,
in 2010, the National (Silver) Invention and Creation Award from MOEA,
Taiwan, in 2011, and the Award for Outstanding Contributions in Science and
Technology from the Executive Yuan, Taiwan, in 2011. He was an Associate
Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation from
2000 to 2004. He was the IEEE ICRA Kayamori Best Automation Paper
Award Committee Chair in 2006, the Senior Program Committee Member of
ICRA in 2011, the Program Chair of IEEE WCICI in 2011, and the Convener
and the Program Director of the NSC Automation Engineering Program,
Taiwan, from 2007 to 2009. He will be the Program Chair of the IEEE CASE
in 2014.
Fan-Wei Kong was born in Tainan, Taiwan, on
December 5, 1984. He received the B.S. degree from
the Department of Industrial Engineering and Sys-
tem Management, Chung Yuan Christian University,
Taichung, Taiwan, in 2005, and the M.S. degree
from the Institute of Manufacturing Engineering,
National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, in 2011,
respectively.
His current research interests include semiconduc-
tor manufacturing automation, equipment engineer-
ing system, e-manufacturing, artificial intelligence,
and statistics.