US 6,507,770 B2Granted

Substrate processing system and substrate processing method

AssigneeTokyo Electron Limited

InventorsMasanori Tateyama, Kenichi Okubo, Jun Ookura

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Abstract

A system for successively extracting unprocessed substrates from a cassette, successively conveying the extracted substrates to a plurality of processing units, causing the processing units to process the substrates, and successively returning processed substrates to a cassette is disclosed. In the system, corresponding to a recipe that contains process conditions for each of at least one lot, a process start prediction time at which processes of each lot start and a process completion prediction time at which processes for each lot are completed are calculated for at least two processes. Corresponding to the process start prediction time and the process completion prediction time, at least one of optimum processing units that optimize processes for each lot is selected for each lot.

Claims16

Dependent claims

A substrate processing system, comprising:

a processing portion having a plurality of processing units for performing a plurality of processes for a first substrate and a second substrate;
a conveying portion, disposed in said processing portion, for exchanging the first substrate and the second substrate at least between the processing units;
a process procedure setting portion for setting a process procedure that includes process conditions corresponding to the first substrate and the second substrate;
and
a selecting portion for obtaining a process start prediction time at which the process of each of the processing unit is started for the first substrate and the second substrate and a process completion prediction time at which the process of each of the processing units is completed for the first substrate and the second substrate corresponding to said processing procedure and for selecting at least one of optimum processing units that optimize the processes for each of the first substrate and the second substrate in each of said first substrate and said second substrate corresponding to the process start prediction time and the process completion prediction time, the process start prediction time and the process completion prediction time being obtained for at least two processes.

2 more elements

A substrate processing system, comprising:

a loading/unloading portion for loading a cassette that contains a plurality of unprocessed substrates for one lot and for unloading a cassette that contains a plurality of processed substrates for one lot;
a processing portion having a plurality of processing units for performing a plurality of processes for a substrate;
a conveying portion, disposed in said processing portion, exchanging substrates with said loading/unloading portion and successively conveying the substrates to the processing units;
a process procedure setting portion for setting a process procedure that includes at least process conditions for each of lots;
and
a calculation processing portion for calculating a process start prediction time at which the process of each processing unit is started for each of lots and a process completion prediction time at which the process of each processing unit is completed for each of lots and for selecting at least one of optimum processing units that optimize processes for each of lots corresponding to the process start prediction time and the process completion prediction time, the process start prediction time and the process completion prediction time being obtained for at least two processes.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 09/874,272Filed 6 Jun 2001
Priority: JP 2000-1705837 Jun 2000
Published: US 2001/0051837 A113 Dec 2001
Granted: 14 Jan 2003
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification9 codes

H10P 72/0612
Apparatus for monitoring, sorting, marking, testing or measuring: production flow monitoring, e.g. for increasing throughput
G05B 19/41865
Total factory control, i.e. centrally controlling a plurality of machines, e.g. direct or distributed numerical control [DNC], flexible…:…
G05B 2219/31407
From computer integrated manufacturing till monitoring: machining, work, process finish time estimation, calculation
G05B 2219/32305
Operator till task planning: fastest interrupt time, change jobs dynamically to fastest machine