Automatic fault detection and isolation for wafer scanners

The economic value of high-tech production environments such as wafer fabs is to a large extent determined by its productivity. Machine downtime due to faults in the system, e.g., actuator/sensor or component faults, deteriorates the achieved productivity and is therefore costly.
Minimization of downtime can be enabled via the process of predicting/detecting a fault in machines and pinpointing its origin, which is called Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI). Key concepts from system theory, in particular signal analysis and system identification, can be used in the development of new and advanced tooling for FDI to timely monitor a change in a certain machine (detection) and to quickly find the root cause of a failing machine (isolation), leading to a reduced downtime. The goal of the project is combine both model-based and data-based approaches in order to ensure optimal supervision.