Equipment management method

Abstract

An equipment management method for managing the semiconductor equipment through an equipment manager that includes a configuration controller, an equipment driver, and a generic equipment interface for communication between the configuration controller and the equipment driver is disclosed. The method includes the steps of providing a production scenario to be written into the production scenario database of the configuration controller, transmitting the production scenario into the equipment behavior database of the equipment driver via the generic equipment interface messages, and transforming the production scenario into equipment rules and SECS II messages via transformation rules set in the database of the equipment driver so as to send these SECS II messages to the equipment for management purposes. The equipment management method also includes the steps of receiving a SECS II message transmitted from the equipment, transforming the SECS II message into equipment rules and storing them into the equipment behavior database, transforming equipment rules into generic equipment interface messages, transmitting the generic equipment interface messages to the configuration controller, and storing them into the production scenario database so as to monitor and control several pieces of equipment.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.