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International Journal of Production Research

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Efficient optimization of process parameters in shadow mask manufacturing using NNPLS and genetic algorithm
Buhwan Jeong, Jaewook Lee & Hyunbo Cho
a

Department of Industrial & Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, San 31 Hyoja, Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea
b

Department of Industrial & Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, San 31 Hyoja, Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea E-mail: Version of record first published: 22 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Buhwan Jeong, Jaewook Lee & Hyunbo Cho (2005): Efficient optimization of process parameters in shadow mask manufacturing using NNPLS and genetic algorithm, International Journal of Production Research, 43:15, 3209-3230 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00958970500137167

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International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 43, No. 15, 1 August 2005, 32093230

Ecient optimization of process parameters in shadow mask manufacturing using NNPLS and genetic algorithm
BUHWAN JEONG, JAEWOOK LEE and HYUNBO CHO*

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Department of Industrial & Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, San 31 Hyoja, Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea

(Revision received November 2004) A shadow mask, the primary component of a cathode ray tube (CRT), is used to prevent the outer edges of electron beams from hitting incorrect phosphor dots. It is fabricated by means of a photo-etching process consisting of a few hundred/thousand process parameters. A primary concern in the management of the process is to determine the optimal process parameter settings necessary to sustain the desired levels of product quality. The characteristics of the process, including a large number of process parameters and collinear observed data, make it dicult to accomplish the primary concern. To cope with the diculties, a two-phase approach is employed that entails the identication of a few critical process parameters, followed by determination of the optimal parameter settings. The former is obtained through the operators domain knowledge and the NNPLS-based prediction model built between process parameters and quality defects. The latter is obtained by solving an optimization problem using a genetic algorithm (GA). A comparative study shows that the proposed approach improves product quality greatly in the shadow-mask manufacturing process. Keywords: Process parameter optimization; Genetic algorithm; Shadow-mask manufacturing process; Neural network partial least-squares (NNPLS); Variable importance index

1. Introduction Shadow masks used in cathode ray tubes (CRTs) are manufactured through a photochemical blanking process, commonly known as a photo-etching process. Recent trends in the CRT market towards at surfaces, high resolutions and large sizes have forced manufacturers to place a greater emphasis on process control to ensure high-quality products. One of the diculties in optimizing product quality in such a photo-etching process is that the number of process parameters that aect the quality of nal products amounts to a few hundred/thousand. Further, the number of quality defects is more than 40. Some quality-improvement methods, such as statistical process control (SPC), total quality control (TQC),

*Corresponding author. Email: hcho@postech.ac.kr

International Journal of Production Research ISSN 00207543 print/ISSN 1366588X online # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/00958970500137167

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design of experiment (DOE), and the Taguchi method (Maruthi and Joseph 19992000, Song et al. 2002), are inappropriate for simultaneously optimizing such a large number of parameters when one or more quality defects drop below desired levels. A model predictive control (MPC) technique is a well-known and widely used methodology for the optimization of large-scale manufacturing processes. The MPC technique consists of two phases: Phase I for the identication of a prediction model to create the inputoutput relationship between process parameters and quality defects, and Phase II for the optimization of process parameters to minimize the quality defects (Camacho and Bordons 1995, Song et al. 2002, Li et al. 2003). In Phase I, a nonlinear prediction model must be built between quality defects and process parameters. A typical method includes articial neural networks (Botto and Costa 1998, Cook et al. 2000, Potocnik and Grabec 2002). However, the small number of observations compared with the number of process parameters and quality defects (short and fat data) makes it dicult to build a robust prediction model. A partial least-squares (PLS) method is another approach to eciently model the short and fat data by reducing the input space dimension and then relating the reduced space with linear functions (Daren 2001, Song et al. 2002); however, it usually fails to obtain a robust relationship due to the nonlinearity of the reduced space (Tang and Li 2002). Among several nonlinear functions (e.g. quadratic function, spline function, neural network-based PLS, etc.), the neural network-based PLS shows the best performance for nonlinear large-scale problems (Malthouse et al. 1997). In Phase II, an optimization problem should be designed to minimize multiple quality defects while the constraints that some of the parameters remain unchanged hold. The optimization problem can be solved by means of iterative optimization algorithms (Camacho and Bordons 1995, Tenny et al. 2002) and heuristic searching algorithms (Jang et al. 1997, Cook et al. 2000). However, for the ecient control of the large-scale manufacturing process, a few critical process parameters should be identied and optimized. In this paper, a combined method of neural network-based PLS (NNPLS) and genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to determine the optimal process parameter settings for large-scale manufacturing processes. To this end, an NNPLS-based prediction model is built between process parameters and quality defects. A few critical process parameters most inuential on quality defects of interest are identied using both the prediction model and the domain knowledge. The critical process parameters are then optimized by using genetic algorithm. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the characteristics of the shadow-mask manufacturing process and provides a conceptual framework for the process parameter optimization. The NNPLS-based methodology to build a prediction model and to identify critical process parameters is proposed in section 3. In section 4, the issues of constructing an optimization problem are discussed. The GA design for solving the optimization problem is addressed in section 5. Section 6 provides the numerical results and analysis. The concluding remarks are presented in section 7.

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2. Target industry description and optimization framework 2.1 Shadow mask and its manufacturing process A shadow mask, a thin at metal sheet with hundreds of thousands of small holes, is used to prevent the outer edges of electron beams from hitting wrong phosphor dots inside a cathode ray tube (CRT) (Kim 2002). It is a key component of colour Braun tubes together with the electron gun and the deection yoke (DY). As shown in gure 1, there are two types of shadow masks: a colour display tube (CDT) shadow mask with circular holes for a CRT monitor, and a colour picture tube (CPT) shadow mask with rounded rectangular holes for a colour TV Braun tube. Each side hole of a shadow mask is etched dierently. Shadow masks are manufactured through a photochemical blanking process, also commonly known as a photo-etching process, as shown in gure 2. This process involves a combination of etching and photolithography in order to produce

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Side view of a hole CDT shadow mask

CPT shadow mask

Figure 1.

Two types of shadow masks and CDTs side view.

Clean workpiece (Cleaning process) Apply the photo resist coating (Coating process)

Expose the photo resist (Imaging process)

Clean the unexposed portion (Developing process)

Etch the unexposed portion with reagent/etchant (Etching process) Final part

Figure 2.

Basic photo-etching process (side view) (DeGarmo et al. 1988).

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integrated circuit boards on semi-conductors, lead frames, tape substrates, at springs, electric motor laminations, etc. The process usually consists of four sequential sub-processes: metal cleaning and coating process, imaging process, developing process, and etching process (DeGarmo et al. 1988, Maruthi and Joseph 19992000). 2.2 Process parameters and quality defects The process parameters and quality defects are periodically measured throughout shadow-mask manufacturing. Examples of the process parameters are shown in table 1. It is noted that some nuisance factors (e.g. atmospheric temperature and humidity) are unchanged during optimization. A few typical quality defects on a shadow mask are illustrated in gure 3.

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Table 1.

Examples of process parameters of the shadow mask manufacturing process. Sub-process Coating Coating Coating Imaging Imaging Imaging Developing Developing Etching Etching Etching Etching Lower 4.00 17.00 23.00 1.80 34.50 8.99 20.00 95.00 28.00 1.00 44.50 40.00 Upper 6.00 19.00 27.00 2.20 35.50 9.15 24.00 115.00 32.00 2.00 46.50 50.00

Name and description (unit) Pressure of washing spray water (kgf cm2) Viscosity of coating liquid (CP) Temperature of coating liquid ( C) Pressure of washing spray water (kgf cm2) Temperature of washing spray water ( C) Line speed of imaging machine (m/min) Temperature of developing process zone ( C) Intensity of illumination (Mw cm2) Temperature of pre-etching solution ( C) Concentration of nickel in corrosive solution (%) Specic gravity of corrosive solution (Be) Temperature of corrosive solution ( C)

(a) Connected holes

(b) Large holes

(c) Unpunched holes

(d) Small holes

Figure 3.

Typical quality defects of a shadow mask.

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Process variables
Observations

Quality variables x 13 x 23 x n3 x 1m x 2m x nm y 11 y 21 y n1 y 12 y 22 y n2 y 1r y 2r y nr

x 11 x 21 x n1

x 12 x 22 x n2

X: Historical process variable data set

Y: Historical quality variable data set

c xm d y1 d y2

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c x1

c x2

c x3

d yr

X : Current process variable data set

Figure 4.

Y : Desired levels of quality variables

Data set required for modelling and optimization.

The notations used for the modelling and analysis are as follows. Without loss of generality, a process parameter is referred to as a process variable, and a type of quality defect is referred to as a quality variable hereafter. Let xi denote the ith process variable (i 1, . . . , m), and let yk be the kth quality variable (k 1, . . . , r). The required data set is depicted in gure 4. Matrices X and Y are the historical data on the process variables and their corresponding quality variables, respectively. A single observation for each quality variable implies the quality defect rate (2[0 1]) in a batch of shadow masks inspected, while a single observation for each process variable implies the actual parameter setting observed when the batch was manufactured. Xc represents the most recently measured process variable settings, and Yd represents the desired levels of the quality variables that should be all zero in shadow-mask manufacturing.

2.3 Conceptual optimization framework The overall procedure for the process parameter optimization is depicted in gure 5. The framework consists of prediction model identication and process control. The former builds a prediction model from the historical data (X and Y) o-line. The latter calculates the importance index of each process variable in terms of relevance, contribution, stability, etc. and then nds the optimal settings by solving an optimization problem.

2.3.1 Data preprocessing. The raw data collected from actual manufacturing processes may contain impurities, missing values, and outliers. The irrelevant and redundant process variables that can potentially deteriorate the modelling results are removed (Qin 1997, Cauchi and Chagnon 2001). Then, outliers, white noises, and missing values are corrected. For each process variable, the data having unrealistic values or outside the permissible range values are treated as missing values. In shadow-mask manufacturing, the data out of 4 from their means are considered

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Preprocessed data (X & Y)

Historical Process Data (X) Historical Quality Data (Y) Current Process c Data (X ) Desired Quality d Level (Y )
y1d y2d y3d yrd

Refined data (X, Y)

Identify a prediction model

Y = f(X) + e
Y

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Prediction model
0 X

Off-line

Determine critical process variables On-line

Process-Quality Relation Table
Process-Quality CorrelationR ate( R)

IIV = g(VC, SPE, DK)

If IIVx Then, x is critical variable Else, x is non-critical variable

Critical variables (Xcritical)

Design an optimization problem

MinZ =| Yd Y| subject to Xmin Xcritical Xmax Xnon-critical = Xnominal or Xc

Optimization model

Solve the optimization problem

Xo = f -1(Yd)
Y Yd 0 Xo X

Optimal setting (X )

Figure 5.

Conceptual framework for modelling and optimization.

missing data. Each row and column with more than 70% missing values is removed, and nally the missing values are lled with the empirical mean of each process variable. Finally, the data should also be standardized.

2.3.2 Prediction model identication. A prediction model is built to map the relationship between the process variables (X) and quality variables (Y) with the preprocessed data. This model is conceptually formulated as Y f(X) e, where e is the error from unknown disturbances. This paper shows an approach using the neural network-based partial least-squares (NNPLS) model to overcome the modelling limitations caused from the small number of observations (short and fat data) and the nonlinear nature of the data collected from a real manufacturing process. It also resolves the problem of collinearity between X and Y as well as among X (Qin 1997). A detailed description of the prediction model is given in section 3.

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2.3.3 Determination of critical variables. Dealing with a large number of process variables has several disadvantages. First, optimizing all the process variables takes too much computing time. Second, adjusting all the optimized process variables at the manufacturing facility takes too long. To determine the critical variables, the process variables can be ranked according to their importance index values. In addition to the mathematical indexes, the domain knowledge is also employed. A detailed description of the critical variables determination is given in section 3.

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2.3.4 Optimization problem. An optimization problem consisting of an objective function and constraints is constructed. For a large-scale manufacturing process, the objective function should be designed to obtain the desired levels of multiple quality variables. Additionally, the number of process variables must be minimized. The constraints restrict the controllable ranges of process variables. Especially, the non-critical or uncontrollable process variables remain unchanged. Section 4 gives a guideline to design the objective function and constraints.

2.3.5 Parameter optimization. Since the optimization problem is nonlinear, it should be solved by means of nonlinear searching algorithms including iterative optimization algorithms (e.g. GaussNewton method, Quasi-Newton method, SQP, etc.) and heuristic searching algorithms (e.g. genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, tabu search, random search, etc.). The former nds the solutions eciently; however, the objective function must be dierentiable, and the solutions often stay at local optima. The latter provides near the global optimum, but requires a considerable amount of time. A detailed description of the genetic algorithm to be applied is given in section 5.

3. Determination of critical variables 3.1 Identication of a prediction model The principle of the NNPLS algorithm is (1) to reduce the original input variables space (X and Y) into a smaller latent variables space (V and U) and (2) to relate the correlated latent variables using neural networks. The dimension reduction makes it possible to build a robust prediction model from collinear and fat and short data, while the use of neural networks enables the nonlinear relationship between process and quality variables to be built (Qin and McAvoy 1992, Daren 2001). The original variables are decomposed as follows: X VPT E Y UQT F V XW U NV, 1 2 3 4

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where V(n a) and U(n a) are the score matrices, P(m a) and Q(r a) are the loading matrices, and E(n m) and F(n r) are the residual matrices of X and Y, respectively. Also, W(m a) is used for constructing orthogonal score vectors of X. A SISO (single-inputsingle-output) neural network is used to construct the nonlinear mapping between the input and output score vectors, i.e. U N(V), every time a pair of latent variables is extracted. This mapping procedure is repeated until the desired number of latent variables is obtained. The procedure can be illustrated as shown in gure 6, where the outer relation represents the decompositions of X and Y, and the inner relation represents the nonlinear mapping between the input and output score vectors. This approach circumvents the problems of over-parameterization and convergence to local minima (Song et al. 2002). A close look at gure 6 reveals that the NNPLS model can be transformed into an equivalent three-layer neural network, as shown in gure 7. The hidden nodes in the three-layer neural network are the exclusive aggregation of hidden nodes in the inner relations of the NNPLS model. Therefore, the weight from the input nodes to the hidden nodes in the three-layer neural network (:) must be a multiplication of the transformation coecient (W), and the transformation coecient from V to the hidden nodes of the inner relation of the NNPLS model. The weight matrix from the hidden nodes to the output nodes in the three-layer neural network ()) can be computed in a similar way (Qin and McAvoy 1992). The use of the NNPLS model obviates any diculties involved in directly constructing a three-layer neural network from an original data set and therefore dramatically reduces the time required for building a prediction model. From the three-layer neural network, Y is predicted as follows: (n " !# ) m h X X 1 2 ^ yk  )jk  :ij xi bj bk , 5
j1 i1

where the activation function  is a sigmoid function z 1 ez =1 ez .

Outer relation

v1

p1T

v2

p2T

va

paT

Inner relation

u1

q 1T

u2

q 2T

ua

q aT

Figure 6.

Relationship between X and Y in the NNPLS model (Qin and McAvoy 1992).

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X
x1 x2 xi

1 1

Y
y1 y2

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xm

yk yr

nh

Input
Figure 7.

Hidden

Output

Three-layer neural network of the NNPLS model.

3.2 Importance index of a process variable The identication of critical process variables makes it possible to achieve the desired levels of quality by optimizing only a small number of controllable process variables. Two mathematical terms are used to measure the importance index of each process variable over the quality variables of interest: (1) the contribution of each process variable to the quality variables, referred to the variable contribution (VC) index that can be computed from the transformed three-layer neural network and (2) the difference between the nominal value and the observed value of each process variable, referred to as the squared prediction error (SPE) index (MacGregor and Kourti 1995). The domain knowledge is also measured and transformed into numerical indexes.

3.2.1 Mathematical indexes. The VC index is calculated using Garsons method that uses the connection weights of a neural network model to compute the proportional contribution (Garson 1991, Olden and Jackson 2002). Garsons method is known to be more easily applicable than other existing algorithms such as the saliency-based pruning algorithm, optical cell damage algorithm, etc. (Leray and Gallinari 1998). Owing to the equivalence between an NNPLS model and a neural network model, the VC index of the ith process variable to the kth quality variable is dened as follows: Pm Pn h j1 :ji = 1 j:j j )kj P  VCik P  , i 1, . . . , m and k 1, . . . , r: Pm nh  m  1 j1 :j = 1 j:j j )kj 6 where :(nh m) and )(nh r) are the weight matrices from the input layer to the hidden layer and from the hidden layer to the output layer in the transformed threelayer neural network, respectively. Hence, the VC index of the ith process variable

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relative to all of the quality variables of interest is dened as follows:  Pr    k1 VCik   , i 1, . . . , m: VCi Pm Pr  VCpk 
p1 k1

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The SPE index is dened as the dierence between observed values and predicted values; thus, the SPE index of the ith process variable is calculated as follows:   a   c   c X   ^ ^ 8 SPEi xi xi  xi vb Pbi , i 1, . . . , m,   b1 ^ where xi is the predicted value of the ith process variable obtained from the prediction model (MacGregor and Kourti 1995). The process variable with a larger SPE index tends to be abnormal at the point of observation. Thus, the SPE index indicates the degree of the instability of the process variable.

3.2.2 Domain knowledge. The mathematical indexes may provide misleading information. For instance, if a particular process variable potentially aects quality defects, the process operators tend to tightly control the process variable. The stable process data result in smaller VC and SPE indexes. However, this does not imply that the variable is not important. Taking the process operators domain knowledge into account can resolve this issue. In general, the domain knowledge contains the correlations between process and quality variables in a descriptive manner. The domain knowledge is converted into numerical data according to the weighted summation method, as shown in gure 8 (Evans and Lindsay 1996). This method rst assigns weights to the quality variables (QI ) and then rates the correlation values (R) between process and quality variables. The subjective domain knowledge (DK) index of ith process variable can be calculated as follows: DKi
r X k1

QIk Rik ,

i 1, . . . , m:

Process variables x1 Quality variables y1 y2 yr QI1 QI2 QIr R11 R12 R1r x2 R21 R22 R2r xm Rm1 Rm2 Rmr

Figure 8.

Processquality relation table for the assessment of domain knowledge.

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3.2.3 Aggregated index. The critical process variables are determined through the importance index of each variable (IIV) obtained from the combination of the VC index, the SPE index, and DK index. The IIV can be represented as IIVi f(VCi, SPEi, DKi), i 1, . . . , m. For example, the aggregation function could be a weighted average spe SPEi wdk DKi)/3), p (i.e. IIVi (wvc VCi w w 3 or multiplication (i.e. IIVi VCiwvc SPEi spe DKiwdk ). The weight of each index in the aggregation function has a great eect on the determination of the critical variables. Although the weights can be obtained from trial-runs and operators experiences, a brief instruction in determining the weights is suggested as follows: rst, the weight of the DK index must be small when the operators are not condent about the process, and thus the processquality relation is not reliably constructed. As the operators become aware of the process, the weight of the DK index must become large in order to reduce the misleading information extracted from only the process data. Second, the weight of VC index must be large when the process is stable, but the point of time at which some faults occur is synchronized with the behaviours of process parameters. Third, the weight of SPE index must be large for online diagnosis and control in a less stable process.

4. Design of optimization problem 4.1 Objective function The objective function is represented in terms of the penalty on the deviation of predicted quality (y) from its desired level (yd) as follows:  2 ^ Minimize Z yd y : 10 Since multiple quality variables are considered in a real manufacturing situation, some approaches, including a weighted sum approach, desirability function approach (Derringer and Suich 1980), and loss function approach (Vining 1998), can be applied. The weighted sum approach is employed in this paper to convert the multiple objectives into a scalar value as follows: r 2 X  d ^ Minimize Z1 wk yk yk : 11
k1

The weighting coecients (wk) do not necessarily correspond directly with the relative importance of the objectives. This is the simplest way to deal with multiple objective functions, but the solutions on a non-convex boundary are not available. Furthermore, the costs incurred to control a manufacturing process are often related to the number of process variables to be changed from their current settings rather than the magnitude of their changes. Even though the critical variables are determined for this purpose, the objective function should accommodate the terms to minimize the number of changes as follows: Minimize Z2 number of changed variables No : number of critical variables s 12

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4.2 Constraints The optimal settings of all the controllable variables must be placed within their controllable ranges, i.e. Xmin X Xmax. Certain process variables should remain at their nominal values or current settings during the optimization, i.e. X Xnominal or X Xc. They include non-critical variables, uncontrollable variables, the variables that are expensive to change their settings, and the variables that the process operators want to keep for their current settings. The dened constraints not only reduce the number of variables to be optimized but also exclude impractical solutions.

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5. Process optimization using genetic algorithm In a large-scale manufacturing process, a nonlinear optimization problem has usually been solved by means of iterative optimization algorithms. Although they are known to be ecient and reliable for small to medium-sized problems, their solutions depend on the initial solutions and become inecient as the size becomes large. In the paper, a genetic algorithm is employed to optimize such a large-scale manufacturing process. 5.1 Application of genetic algorithm Genetic algorithm (GA), a global optimization method (Jang et al. 1997), can be applied in various application areas including facility layout design, machiningcondition determination, building design, system-parameter estimation, and process-parameter optimization (Caldas and Norford 2002, Islier 1998, Cook et al. 2000, Daren 2001, Edward et al. 2002, Tang and Li 2002). GA nds the solutions through the evolution of a set of chromosomes. In each generation, a new population is generated through genetic operations such as selection, crossover, mutation, and elitism. Two ospring chromosomes can be produced by the probabilistic mating of the two selected chromosomes based on a crossover rate (crossover operation). An ospring can also be produced by randomly changing some bits of a parent chromosome based on a mutation rate (mutation operation). The elite chromosome with the best tness is sometimes reproduced at the next generation. The evolution process is continued until a certain stopping criterion is met, such as the maximum number of generations, allowable computation time, desired tness value, minimal improvement, or minimal relative improvement (Jang et al. 1997). 5.2 Objective function The objective function consists of the penalty on the derivations of the predicted values of quality defects from their desired levels (equation (11)) and the penalty on the number of changed process variables (equation (12)). Based on equations (11) and (12), the objective function is dened as follows: r 2 X N ^ Minimize Z o yd yk : 13 k s k1

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x1 1 part 2nd part
st

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xm-2 xm-1 xm

x2 1 0.8

x3 1 65

x4 0 30

xs-1 1 6.8

xs 1 20.2

xs+1

0 27.1

143

24.5

90

81.2

Critical variables

Non-critical variables

Figure 9.

Example of chromosome encoding.

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5.3 Representation and initialization The chromosome representation consists of the two parts to accommodate the objective function. The rst part is to determine which process variables are changed, while the second part is to determine the change magnitude of the process variables. The length of the rst part is equal to the number of critical process variables, and each gene is either 1 or 0, in which 1s indicate that the corresponding process variables are changed. The second part is encoded in a decimal system, instead of binary encoding. Binary encoding may cause the solutions to be asymptotically identical or out of the solution space. Another reason that binary encoding is nearly impossible is that most process variables are continuous. An example of a chromosome encoded in a decimal system is depicted in gure 9. To help understand this, the critical process variables are positioned at the front part of each chromosome. The non-critical process variables are set to nominal values and do not participate in any evolution except a tness evaluation. 5.4 Evaluation and selection The value of the objective function becomes smaller as the predicted value approaches the desired level. Thus, to increase the probability of good chromosomes being selected as parents, the tness of each chromosome is obtained from the value of the objective function through a transformation mechanism that has the following properties: (1) positive, (2) monotonic, and (3) decreasing over the range of the objective values. A typical transformation function is an inverse function, tness k/(Z ), where k is an arbitrary constant, and  is to keep tness from innite when Z approaches to 0. A combined strategy of the roulette wheel and elitism is used as the selection mechanism. 5.5 Crossover As shown in gure 10, the three crossover operations are employed: one-point, twopoint, and arithmetic crossover. In one-point crossover, a crossover point on the chromosome string is randomly selected, and then the two parent chromosomes are interchanged at this point. In two-point crossover, the chromosome string between two points on one parent is swapped with the corresponding section of the other parent to generate two osprings. Arithmetic crossover combines two parent chromosomes linearly to generate two osprings.

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x1 27.1 27.2

x2 0.8 0.7

x3 65 61

x4 30 34

xs-1 6.8 6.9

xs 20.2 20.5

xs+1 143 143

xm-2 24.5 24.5

xm-1 90 90

xm 81.2 81.2

(a) One-point crossover 27.1 0.8 0.7 65 61 34 30 6.9 6.8

Crossover 20.5 20.2 143 143 24.5 24.5 90 90 81.2 81.2

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27.2

(b) Two-point crossover 27.1 27.2 0.8 0.7 61 65 34 30 6.9 6.8 20.2 20.5 143 143 24.5 24.5 90 90 81.2 81.2

(c) Arithmetic crossover (by the mean of two values) 27.3 27.3 0.8 0.7 65 61 32 32 6.85 20.2 6.85 20.5 143 143 24.5 24.5 90 90 81.2 81.2

Figure 10. Example of crossover operations.

As shown in gure 11, the three crossover operations are chosen with probabilities of po, pt, and pa, respectively, where po pt pa 1.

5.6 Mutation The mutation operation is to assign an arbitrary value within their controllable or allowable range to the process variable. This operation keeps the solution from local optima. Since the process variables with a higher importance index (IIV) have greater inuences on the quality variables of interest, mutating those variables frequently can help yield better solutions faster. The probability that each process variable is mutated depends on its IIV index.

5.7 Parameters for implementation The GA parameters (e.g. the population size, the number of generations, mutation rate, etc.) must be chosen appropriately to yield reliable solutions. In general, the larger population size and the larger number of generations keep solutions from converging to local optima, but they require longer computation times. The larger mutation rate also helps the system escape from local optima. All the parameters should be determined by experiments.

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Select two parent chromosomes Generate a random number (R1) within (0, 1) R1 Cr R1 > Cr
Cr: Crossover rate

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Check R1

Generate a random number (R2) within (0, 1) R2 po Check R2

Reproduce the parent chromosomes

po+pt < R2 po < R2 po+pt

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One-point crossover

Two-point crossover

Arithmetic crossover

Figure 11. Crossover procedure.

6. Numerical results and analysis 6.1 Data denition For a comparative study, the proposed framework was applied to a shadow-mask plant. The number of process and quality variables is 323 and 4, respectively. The number of observations is 295. Table 2 contains a partial data set. 6.2 Experimental design 6.2.1 Experimental setup. After preprocessing the collected data, 73 process variables were used to build a prediction model. In order to determine the number of latent variables and critical process variables, a standard measure of NNPLS model tness (i.e. R2Y, the fraction of sum of squares of all Ys explained by the extracted latent variables) is used. R2Y of the ath latent variable is calculated as follows: Va R2 Yta 1 SSFa =SSY, 14

where SS denotes the sum of squares, and Fa is the residual after a latent variables are extracted. Ten experiments with 100 randomly selected observations are performed to determine the number of latent variables. As shown in gure 12, cumulative R2Y stops increasing when 20 latent variables are extracted, so the number of latent variables is set to 20. The parameters related to the genetic algorithm for the numerical analysis are set according to a few experiments:
. . . . . . . .

population size: 100 maximum number of generation: 50 elitism rate: 0.01 crossover rate: 0.8 mutation rate: 0.2 one-point crossover probability: 0.45 two-point crossover probability: 0.45 arithmetic crossover probability: 0.1.

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Table 2.
Observation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Sample data set of the shadow-mask manufacturing process.

Process variables

x1 29.2 28.9 29.3 28.9 27.8 29.0 29.5 30.0 30.1 30.5

x2 19.2 19.5 19.6 19.9 19.5 19.4 19.3 19.2 19.0 18.8

x3 27.2 27.1 26.5 26.8 27.1 22.2 25.3 26.6 22.2 29.8

x4 23.9 23.9 23.9 23.9 24.1 24.5 26.9 23.5 24.5 25.1

x5 1.05 1.04 1.04 1.04 1.04 0.91 1.03 1.05 1.02 0.89

x6 1.05 1.05 1.05 1.05 1.05 0.95 0.89 1.05 1.18 0.81

x7 0.52 0.52 0.52 0.52 0.52 0.54 0.55 0.52 0.54 0.52

x8 0.13 0.13 0.13 0.13 0.13 0.08 0.20 0.13 0.08 0.90

x9

x10

x11 200 200 200 200 200 130 150 200 130 160

x12 7.59 7.59 7.59 7.59 7.59 6.59 4.08 7.59 6.59 4.28

x13 3.96 3.94 3.97 3.94 3.92 3.71 2.55 3.99 3.76 2.54

x14 29.6 29.7 29.8 29.5 30.0 29.9 30.3 29.8 30.4 30.1

x15 134 134 134 133 134 96 119 134 58.5 125

x16 66.7 66.9 66.5 66.6 66.4 70.2 70.3 66.2 70.1 70.8

x17 108 107 108 104 107 92 91 107 92 90

x18 2.79 2.79 2.79 2.77 2.77 3.06 2.34 2.75 3.08 2.18

x19 32.2 32.2 32.3 31.5 31.5 53.2 37.2 31.8 49.9 31.8

x20 57.3 57.2 57.2 57.2 57.3 52.8 53.9 57.2 52.8 52.1

x21 2.35 2.89 2.92 2.33 3.04 2.91 2.28 2.28 2.76 3.05

x22 5.02 2.4 2.4 5.04 1.92 2.4 5.01 5.01 3 1.93

x23 5.02 2.44 2.46 5.02 1.92 2.46 5.02 5.01 4.08 1.93

x24 5.06 2.43 2.42 5.09 1.92 2.43 5.09 5.08 4.13 1.92

0.11 7 0.11 7 0.11 7 0.11 7 0.11 7 0.10 60 0.80 7 0.11 7 0.10 60 0.90 6

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Process variables x25 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5.07 2.52 2.53 5.07 1.94 2.51 5.07 5.05 4.82 1.94 x26 3.68 1.97 1.97 3.68 0.53 1.88 3.67 3.65 2.33 0.53 x27 3.68 2.83 2.85 3.68 1.59 2.84 3.71 3.67 3.16 1.61 x28 3.73 1.96 1.96 3.75 0.75 1.97 3.74 3.74 2.77 0.73 x29 3.68 1.94 1.93 3.68 0.63 1.8 3.71 3.67 2.33 0.62 x30 3.53 2.84 2.86 3.54 1.62 2.88 3.55 3.52 3.2 1.62 x31 3.78 1.95 1.97 3.78 0.86 1.95 3.78 3.78 2.75 0.84 x32 2.13 1.75 1.75 2.15 0.22 2.16 2.17 2.16 2.2 0.21 x33 3.65 1.92 1.94 3.66 0.62 1.8 3.68 3.6 2.34 0.62 x34 3.81 2.8 2.81 3.8 1.59 2.81 3.82 3.82 3.12 1.6 x35 3.76 1.94 1.96 3.76 0.79 1.95 3.78 3.75 2.8 0.79 x36 3.67 1.89 1.9 3.67 0.55 1.79 3.69 3.68 2.18 0.56 x37 3.46 2.84 2.87 3.54 1.6 2.85 3.46 3.46 3.2 1.6 x38 3.78 1.95 1.97 3.81 0.81 1.95 3.8 3.79 2.89 0.8 x39 2.1 1.81 1.81 2.1 0.19 2.1 2.1 2.11 2.18 0.16 x40 3.75 1.87 1.87 3.77 0.64 1.74 3.77 3.77 2.27 0.65 x41 3.75 1.97 1.95 3.77 0.7 1.95 3.75 3.74 2.77 0.71 x42 3.81 1.93 1.93 3.79 0.57 1.93 3.78 3.75 2.32 0.58 x43 1.81 0.1 0.1 1.86 1.86 0.1 1.87 1.85 3.03 2.15 x44 3.66 2.8 2.8 3.7 1.58 2.78 3.72 3.72 3.17 1.57

Quality variables y1 0 4.2 4.2 0 3.6 0 4.2 0 0 0 y2 4.2 0 0 4.2 0 4.2 0 4.2 2.8 5 y3 0 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2.8 0 y4 0 0 0 0 3.6 0 0 0 2.8 0

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Figure 12.

R2Y and cumulative R2Y as the number of latent variables increases.

6.2.2 Experimental design. The rst set of experiments is designed to determine the aggregation function and the aggregation weight used to choose critical variables. The possible aggregation function includes the individual index (i.e. VC, SPE, and DK), average form (e.g. VC SPE, VC SPE DK, etc.), multiplication form (e.g. VC SPE, VC SPE DK, etc.), and mixed form (e.g. SPE (VC DK), etc.). The possible aggregation weight includes (wvc : wspe : wdk) (1:1:1), (2:1:1), (1:2:1), or (1:1:2). For each combination, the 10 experiments were performed with 100 randomly selected observations. The second set of experiments is designed to show that the optimization with critical process variables is suciently eective to control the overall manufacturing process. Another objective is to show that the use of GA provides a better performance than iterative optimization algorithms, including sequential quadratic programming (SQP) (Song et al. 2002), multi-start SQP (MS-SQP), and simulated annealing (SA) algorithms (Jang et al. 1997). One hundred experiments were performed with 100 randomly selected samples.

6.3 Experimental results 6.3.1 Determination of aggregation function and weight. Table 3 lists a sampled quality-process relation table, and normalized DK index, VC index, and SPE index. pprocess variables are selected as critical variables according to The shaded IIV VC SPE . Table 4 summarizes the average R2Ys and the improvement rate (that is, the dierence of objective values between current settings and optimized settings without consideration of the number of changes) used to choose the aggregation function and weight. In the experiments, the R2Y values are usually larger when the VC index is used, and so the VC index has a larger aggregation weight. On the other hand, the improvement rate depends more on the SPE index. This is because the SPE index is used to detect the process variables aecting the quality of the product most recently produced. Although the DK index does not help in determining the critical variables in this case, it must be usedp the misleading information from data for correcting analysis. In the table, IIV VC SPE (i.e. wvc : wspe 1:1) yields good results in

3226 Table 3. QI x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7 x8 x9 x10 x11 x12 x13 x14 x15 x16 x17 x18 x19 x20 y1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 3 0 0 0 3 3 y2 1 1 1 0 3 1 1 3 1 1 3 3 1 0 1 1 3 3 1 0 0

B. Jeong et al. Sampled qualityprocess relation table and individual IIV indexes. y3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 y4 1 0 0 0 0 3 3 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Normalized DK index 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.9 0.2 0.2 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.1 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.3 0.3 Normalized VC index 0.561 0.590 0.735 0.509 0.755 1.000 0.575 0.373 0.432 0.307 0.324 0.200 0.407 0.450 0.514 0.679 0.323 0.515 0.572 0.402 Normalized SPE index 0.287 0.531 0.273 0.182 1.000 0.554 0.394 0.417 0.270 0.257 0.256 0.165 0.216 0.406 0.953 0.511 0.206 0.167 0.261 0.239 IIV index 0.401 0.560 0.448 0.304 0.869 0.744 0.476 0.394 0.342 0.281 0.288 0.182 0.297 0.427 0.700 0.589 0.258 0.293 0.386 0.310

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Table 4. Function/weight ALL VC SPE DK VC SPE VC DK SPE DK VC SPE VC DK SPE DK VC SPE DK VC SPE DK SPE (VC DK)

Average R2Y and improvement rate (%). 2:1:1 95.041/18.81 94.565/18.83 95:209/18.83 94.811/18.72 94.181/18.75 95.067/18.80 92.527/18.73 1:2:1 94.845/18:95 93.992/18.92 94.845/18:95 93.579/18.96 94.397/18.81 94.701/18.85 92.839/18.84 1:1:2 90.965/18.49 90.992/18.74 92.245/18.84 92.218/18.60 95.114/18.77 94.323/18.84 93.992/18:92

1:1:1 96.156/18.86 94.975/18.73 94.225/18.83 90.544/18.69 95.169/18.85 92.992/18.84 92.164/18.62 95:267=18:89 92.377/18.82 92.763/18.78 94:923/18.77 95.204/18.81 94.776/18.77

Note that underscore ( _ ) implies the best performance.

both R2Y and improvement rate, and so it will be used to determine the critical process variables in the remainder of the paper.

6.3.2 Determination of critical variables. Ten experiments with 100 randomly selected observations are performed to determine the optimal number of critical process variables. As shown in gure 13, cumulative R2Y stops increasing at about 40 process variables (that is, approximately half the number of total process variables). Thus, the number of critical process variables is set to 40.

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Figure 13. Cumulative R2Y as the number of process variables increases.

Table 5. Approach Improvement rate (%)

Performance comparison. Number of changes (No) 24.37 33.94 39.60 39.59 43.16 59.29 71.50 72.15 Unit improvement rate (improvement rate/No) 0.774313 0.545669 0.460859 0.481182 0.438137 0.315399 0.256643 0.264172

Computation time (s)

Using the critical process variables (40 only) GA 18.87 13.38 SA 18.52 1.32 SQP 18.25 2.96 MS-SQP 19.05 31.31 Using all the process variables (73) GA 18.91 15.62 SA 18.70 1.21 SQP 18.35 1.22 MS-SQP 19.06 10.89

6.3.3 Comparisons of optimization methods. Table 5 summarizes the performance comparison in terms of the improvement rate, the computational time, and the number of changes from the current settings. First, the improvement rate of using 40 critical process variables is similar to that of using all the process variables. The computational time is slightly reduced since the non-critical process variables do not participate in the GA optimization procedure; however, the constraint of keeping non-critical variables at their current settings leads to longer computational times in other optimization procedures. Second, although SA and SQP are faster than GA, GA yields a better solution. MS-SQP provides a good improvement rate but the largest computational time. Third, the second term of the objective function (Z2) enables the GA optimization procedure to obtain optimal values with signicantly fewer changes in process variables (No). Fourth, even though the performance of the proposed GA approach is similar to other approaches in terms of

3228 Table 6.

B. Jeong et al. Comparison of the predicted responses. Critical process variables Predicted responses (%) y1 7.2 y2 1.4 y3 26.9 y4 17.3 y1 2.1 y2 0.4 y3 3.8 y4 2.7

Before optimization

After optimization

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x1 30.125 x5 1.054 x8 0.2 x16 68.8 x1 29.175 x5 1.042 x8 0.2 x16 68.8

x2 14.9 x6 0.942 x14 29.41 x19 36.4 x2 19.175 x6 1.046 x14 29.41 x19 36.4

x3 28.5 x7 0.551 x15 118.8 x3 27.2 x7 0.551 x15 134.3

improvement rate, it should be noted that the GA approach minimizes the number of changed process variables while improving the product quality, as indicated by the unit improvement rate (improvement rate over the number of changed process variables). Table 6 compares the predicted responses at the two dierent points of time: before optimization and after optimization. The actual defect rates before optimization were 5%, 0%, 30%, and 15%, respectively. It is noted that the actual defect rates are slightly dierent from the predicted responses. 6.4 Conrmation runs The proposed approach has been applied to the real shadow-mask manufacturing process, whose results showed that the steps necessary to control the process were simplied (i.e. the number of changed process variables was reduced) and the average defect rate was reduced from 40% to 15%. It should be noted that the proposed approach could be applied to the real process only three times. Although the scientic approach looks promising, the operators at a shop oor were reluctant to apply the approach to their shop directly. However, besides their experience-based process control, the operators started to use the scientic approach.

7. Conclusion Shadow masks are manufactured via a photo-etching process consisting of four sequential sub-processes. In this study, a two-phase approach was presented for optimizing the parameters of such a large-scale manufacturing process. A small number of critical process variables were identied at the rst phase, and then an optimization problem was solved at the second phase. The rst phase uses both the NNPLS-based prediction model and the operators domain knowledge. The second phase uses GA to nd the optimal settings of the critical process parameters. The proposed two-phase approach turned out to be appropriate for modelling and optimizing the short and fat data collected from the large-scale shadow-mask manufacturing process. Numerical experiments showed that the proposed approach not only reduced the data size eectively but also improved the quality of products of interest by optimizing only the small number of critical process variables. In comparison with

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other search algorithms, GA provided reasonable and convenient solutions. The use of critical process variables also helped to improve the performance of GA with respect to the computational time while preserving the quality of solutions. After applying the proposed approach to the shadow-mask manufacturing process, the procedure to control the process was simplied, and the average defect rate was reduced from 40% to 15%. It is noted that unidentied external disturbances could prohibit the shop-oor engineers from achieving further improvements (i.e. less than 15%). The proposed approach can be applied to other large-scale manufacturing processes such as steel-making processes and polymer processes. For long-term management of the manufacturing processes, an appropriate knowledge base should be constructed in order to manage the prediction model, optimal parameter settings, and shop-oor engineers domain knowledge. In addition, a more systematic and robust method to determine the weight of the VC, SPE, and DK indices should be investigated. Various parameters for improving the performance of GA need to be studied also.

Acknowledgement The authors acknowledge the partial nancial support of the BK21 project.

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