Method and apparatus for carrying a variety of products

An apparatus for carrying a variety of products comprising:

• a carriage having a box for transferring a cassette which holds at least one wafer and isolating the cassette to be transferred from an external atmosphere to carry the cassette;
• a loop-like carrying rail on which said carriage travels;
• and
• a charge-removal device for charging the cassette which holds the wafer into said carriage and removing the cassette which holds the wafer transferred on said carriage and already subjected to all the processing processes;
• an equipment module comprising:
• a processing apparatus for processing one process or plural processing processes for wafers;
• a storage box for temporarily storing said cassettes by product group and process;
• a discriminator for discriminating a wafer number comprising at least a product number and a serial number of a wafer written on the wafer or a data write/read device for writing and reading cassette information added to the cassette;
• a transfer device for receiving and delivering the cassettes between said carriage, said processing apparatus, said storage box, and said discriminator;
• and
• a cassette delivery unit including as constituent elements, said transfer device, said storage box and said discriminator, which are surrounded by a clean box to maintain the interior at a clean atmosphere isolated from the external atmosphere, said wafer delivery unit being connected to said processing apparatus to mediate the delivery of cassettes and wafers between said carriage and said processing apparatus;
• a plurality of kinds and units of said equipment module serving as a fundamental unit being arranged to be connected to the circumference of said carrying rail;
• and
• a host controller for collectively controlling, through a communication network, controllers which hold a process flow data indicative of process numbers in accordance with the process order by product groups collectively including products in which the process order and the processing conditions belong to the same category to manage inventory data by product group showing the quantity of inventory by product group and process, standard inventory data showing the quantity of standard inventory by product group and process, inventory data by apparatus showing the quantity of inventory for said storage boxes every processing apparatus of each of said equipment modules, and carriage data comprising at least product group, processing record and number of sheets of wafers being carried by said carriage, so as to determine the product group, the processing record, the number of sheets and the charging order of the wafers delivered between the carriage and the equipment module to individually control said carrying system and a group of said equipment modules.