Methods, systems, and apparatus, including medium-encoded computer program products, for synchronizing the manufacture of objects using two or more separate tools include, in at least one aspect, determining tasks to be performed in a shared build volume to manufacture a 3D object, assigning the tasks to respective queues, ordering the tasks within each queue of assigned tasks based on a spatial dimension extent, generating wait times within the queues in accordance with timing dependencies, identifying which of the queues of assigned tasks takes a most amount of time in accordance with temporal dimension extents and the wait times, creating at least one variant of the queues of assigned tasks, repeating the ordering, the adding, and the identifying to reduce a total time of manufacturing, and providing a finalized version of the queues of assigned tasks for conducting synchronized activities of manufacturing in the shared build volume.

A component mounting line control system controls a component mounting line. The component mounting line includes a component mounting device and a board retrieving unit. The component mounting line control system includes an acquirer and a controller. The acquirer acquires information from the board retrieving unit. The controller controls the component mounting device based on the information acquired by the acquirer. The controller lengthens a time taken for a manufacturing process in the component mounting device in a case where the acquirer acquires first warning information, which indicates that a board accommodation limit is about to be reached, from the board retrieving unit.

It is very difficult to schedule a single-arm cluster tool with wafer revisiting such that wafer residency time constraints are satisfied. The present invention conducts a study on this challenging problem for a single-arm cluster tool with atomic layer deposition (ALD) process. With a so called p-backward strategy being applied, a Petri net model is developed to describe the dynamic behavior of the system. Based on the model, existence of a feasible schedule is analyzed, schedulability conditions are derived, and scheduling algorithms are presented if there is a schedule. A schedule is obtained by simply setting the robot waiting time if schedulable and it is very computationally efficient. The obtained schedule is shown to be optimal. Illustrative examples are given to demonstrate the proposed approach.

A method for controlling a production process is disclosed. The method comprises performing a simulation of a production process of a plurality of machines of a production line for a plurality of configurations of a speed management component, comprising, for each configuration, determining, by a simulation component, a plurality of statuses of the plurality of machines of the production line based on one or more events altering an operation state of the production line and based on speed set points for the plurality of machines, calculating, by a digital twin speed management component, at least one new speed set point for at least one machine of the plurality of machines of the production line, based on the determined plurality of statuses and the respective configuration used for the digital twin speed management component, and analysing performance of the production line based on speed set points for the plurality of machines, including the calculated at least one new speed set point for at least one machine of the plurality of machines, and, based on the analysis, deploying a configuration of the plurality of configurations of the speed management component for controlling the plurality of machines of the production line.