Patent ID: 7908127

Claim:
A method, comprising: initializing, in a process simulator, a simulation model of a process sequence in a manufacturing environment with process information from a plurality of process tools of said manufacturing environment and a plurality of product entities to be processed or being processed in said manufacturing environment in a plurality of concurrent process flows, wherein each process flow operates according to a different one of a plurality of process recipes, and wherein at least one of the plurality of product entities re-enters at least one of the plurality of process tools during at least one corresponding process flow; performing, in the process simulator, a plurality of simulations of the process sequence for said plurality of product entities in said manufacturing environment on the basis of said process information, said plurality of process recipes and a model for each of said plurality of process tools to generate a plurality of simulation results of said process sequence, each simulation beginning at a different initialization state of the plurality of concurrent process flows so that each simulation result represents a different time progression of the product entities within said manufacturing environment within a predefined time interval; selecting, in a process scheduler, one of the simulation results using a predefined criterion; and establishing, in the process scheduler using said one of the simulation results, a schedule for processing said plurality of product entities in said manufacturing environment in the plurality of concurrent process flows.