RUN-TIME DISPATCH SYSTEM FOR ENHANCED PRODUCT CHARACTERIZATION CAPABILITY

Disclosed herein are embodiments of an automated manufacturing system that is used to process multiple jobs in a product fabrication environment, where such processing comprises performing the same multiple consecutive process steps for each job and where each process step can be accomplished using one or more different available processing tools. The manufacturing system incorporates a unique run-time dispatch system. This dispatch system schedules the order in which jobs will be processed and further randomly assigns a particular combination of process steps and tools to each job in such a way that the processing tools are evenly distributed across the jobs. Ensuring even distribution of processing tools allows a statistical process control system to not only detect, for a given process step, product variability outside desired specifications, but also to efficiently de-convolve such product variability.