Manufacturing management and apparatus for a semiconductor device

A production management method in a production system for semiconductor devices, comprising:

• the step of creating a next start standby product group, including a plurality of semiconductor products of different kinds, located at a predetermined standby portion, said plurality of kinds of products being respectively supplied to any of a plurality of manufacturing devices, each of which can process a plurality of kinds of semiconductor products;
• the step of detecting kinds of said plurality of products constituting said next start standby product group, which are on a standby status at said predetermined standby portion;
• the step of detecting each kind of product which is presently being processed by each of said plurality of manufacturing devices and, at the same time, detecting a future prediction time for the processing of each product being processed by each of said plurality of manufacturing devices without resort to a timer;
• the step of determining whether or not a particular kind of the next start product is included in said next start standby product group on said predetermined standby portion coincides with the kind of product processed by a predetermined manufacturing device which will be in a next position to end processing;
• the step of supplying said next start product to said predetermined manufacturing device having said next order corresponding to the due order of supplying when said kind of the next start product coincides with said kind of the product processed in said predetermined manufacturing device;
• the step of determining whether or not a kind of any products in succeeding end orders of devices, such as the next processing end device, the device having two orders after the next processing end device and the device having three orders after next processing end device, is the same kind of said next start product, after temporarily stopping supply of the product in due order when said kind of said next start product differs from said kind of product in the next processing end manufacturing device;
• the step of supplying the same kind of the product to said predetermined manufacturing device after waiting for the end of a present processing of said predetermined manufacturing device when the kind of the next start product coincides with any of said succeeding end orders of processing;
• the step of selecting and supplying to said predetermined manufacturing device the product having the same kind of said predetermined manufacturing device prior to the product having a different kind, from said product standby portion under the same conditions in the previous step;
• the step of determining if a manufacturing device which is processing a product of a kind which differs from any of the kinds of products of several succeeding standby orders when the kind of the next standby product differs from any of the kinds of products processed in any of the manufactured devices;
• the step of changing the kind of product in said manufacturing device which has been determined in a previous determination step and is processing the product of the kind differing from any of the kinds of products presently undergoing processing in one of the processing manufacturing devices when the device ends the present processing;
• and
• the step of supplying the product of the kind having the fist supply order and different from the kind of any devices presently undergoing processing in said one of the processing devices, to a determined manufacturing device.

A production management apparatus in a production system for semiconductor devices comprising:

• determining means for receiving production completion information from each of a number of manufacturing apparatuses for products of the same type as the type of product being processed by the manufacturing apparatus that gave, without resort to a timer, the production completion information for said next start standby product group, for determining said manufacturing apparatus that gave said production completion information for the same type priority of allocation for start of manufacture of a product of the same type instead of starting another manufacturing apparatus, even if said other manufacturing apparatus is in a status that enables processing of a next product prior to said manufacturing apparatus that gave said production completion information, and
• a means for determining, when production completion information is received from each of said number of manufacturing apparatuses, a product of a same type as the next start product, even if the determined product is a product of the same type as a product being processed by a manufacturing apparatus that gave production completion information at the time of receipt of said production completion information and exists among said number of next start standby products, and when there are not products of the same type as a product that was being processed by a manufacturing apparatus that gave the production completion information, determining a product type other than a product type that was the object of priority allocation as said next start product and giving a next product start instruction to a manufacturing apparatus which gave said production completion information.