A system identification approach to PDE modeling of a semiconductor manufacturing process

Efficient supply chain management is a crucial imperative for modern, global enterprises. Tactical decision policies based on process control principles have been developed in the literature for managing production-inventory systems and supply chain networks. To be effective these decision policies depend on accurate nominal models. With a discreteevent simulation acting as a "truth model", we employ system identification techniques to parameterize a nonlinear Partial Differential Equation (PDE) model of the semiconductor manufacturing process. A case study shows that the identified PDE model can accurately predict the output of the discrete-event simulation, but without the high computational burden.