Manufacturing condition setting automating apparatus and method

A manufacturing condition setting automating apparatus comprising:

• a facility data acquiring unit that always collects a plurality of pieces of facility data from a manufacturing facility in manufacturing operation, and records the plurality of pieces of facility data in a database;
• a quality judging unit that computes a present process capability (quality) from facility data of a target manufacturing facility at predetermined time intervals, and judges whether or not the present process capability is in a quality tolerance range;
• a manufacturing condition candidate creating unit that, in a case that the present process capability is judged as being not in the quality tolerance range, computes a feature quantity to be used for a similarity judgment from latest facility data, searches a database of a past condition change history for condition change cases having similar feature quantities, tabulates condition change cases found through the search on a basis of whether the condition change cases are successes or failures, and outputs manufacturing condition candidates in descending order of rates of successes;
• an imbalance-preventing manufacturing condition candidate creating unit that, in a case that a present long-term KPI is judged as being higher than a target value, changes scores that decide ranks of manufacturing condition candidates, and creates manufacturing condition candidates in which condition change candidates with fewer failed cases are ranked higher, except for a condition change candidate having a highest rate of successes;
• and
• a manufacturing condition output unit that outputs a set value of a condition change of a top manufacturing condition candidate to the manufacturing facility, and registers a new condition change in the condition change history.