Adjusting apparatus, production processing system, and method of controlling adjusting apparatus

• US 20060102858A1
• Filed: 11/16/2005
• Published: 05/18/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Omron Corporation
• Original Assignee: Omron Corporation
• Inventors: Fujii, Toru, Tsuda, Manabu, Kumamoto, Hiroshi
• Granted Patent: US 7,176,475 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 250/559.450
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 21/88 Investigating the presence of flaws or contamination

Abstract

An adjusting apparatus includes a judging unit that receives a characteristic value of an article processed by one of processing machines from one of measuring machines and, on the basis of the characteristic value, judges whether or not the processed article meets regular quality, and an abnormality estimating unit that, when the processed article does not meet regular quality, specifies an device to be adjusted on the basis of whether a characteristic value out of the regular range appears for every two cycles or three cycles.

Claims

1. An adjusting apparatus which receives characteristic values indicating quality of articles produced by one of m production processing devices from one of n measuring devices and specifies a device to be adjusted, where m and n are natural numbers different from each other, the adjusting apparatus comprising:

a judging unit that, on the basis of the characteristic values received from the measuring device, judges whether or not the produced articles meet regular quality;

a storage device that stores the characteristic values received from the measuring device in association with a sequence number in which the articles having the characteristic values are produced;

a cycle detecting unit that, if the judging unit judges that the produced articles do not meet regular quality, on the basis of the characteristic values stored in the storage device, detects cyclicity of the abnormal characteristic value, which is a characteristic value out of a range of characteristic values when the produced article meets regular quality, indicating whether the abnormal characteristic value appears by m cycles or n cycles; and

a specifying unit that specifies the device to be adjusted on the basis of the detection result by the cycle detecting unit.

2. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a calculating unit that calculates a statistical feature of the characteristic values associated with cyclicity of the abnormal characteristic value on the basis of the characteristic values stored in the storage device,

wherein on the basis of the statistical feature calculated by the calculating unit, the cycle detecting unit determines to detect either the m cycles or the n cycles from cyclicity of the abnormal characteristic value to be detected.

3. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 2,

wherein the characteristic values stored in the storage device are also stored in association with a number allocated to the measuring device which measures the characteristic values,

the calculating unit has a distribution feature calculating unit that, on the basis of the characteristic values stored in the storage device, divides the range of the characteristic values into predetermined sections and calculates distribution feature information indicating a feature of frequency distribution information of characteristic values included in a range of each section, and

an individual defective fraction calculating unit that calculates an individual defective fraction, which is the ratio of the abnormal characteristic value with respect to the characteristic values measured by each of the measuring devices.

4. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 3, further comprising;

a changing unit that, when the production processing device is specified by the specifying unit as the device to be adjusted, changes a set value for defining the operation of the production processing device; and

a change instructing unit that instructs the changing unit to change the set value so as to cause the frequency distribution information to approximate to frequency distribution information in accordance with the characteristic values of the articles which meet regular quality,

wherein the changing unit changes the set value of one of the m production processing devices in accordance with the change instruction by the change instructing unit.

wherein the change instructing unit instructs the changing unit to change the set value until frequency distribution information in accordance with a post-change characteristic value of an article produced after the set value is changed by the changing unit approximates to the frequency distribution information in accordance with the characteristic values to be obtained from the produced articles which meet regular quality.

5. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a data collecting unit that, when a transfer sequence number of the articles corresponding to the characteristic values measured by the measuring device is considered as a time axis, creates time series data indicating the change of the characteristic values according to the time axis;

a translation calculating unit that performs frequency translation on time series data created by the data collecting unit so as to calculate frequency data;

a degree-of-variation calculating unit that calculates a change amount of a degree of variation of the characteristic values before and after the adjustment of the device to be adjusted on the basis of a sum of power spectrum values and a power spectrum value in a frequency band corresponding to a specified cycle in which the abnormal characteristic value appears, based on the frequency data calculated by the translation calculating unit, and a value indicating the degree of variation of all the characteristic values; and

an output unit which outputs information indicating the change amount of the degree of variation calculated by the degree-of-variation calculating unit.

6. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the storage device also stores variation tolerance information indicating a degree of variation which is judged that the adjustment of the device to be adjusted does not need to be preformed with respect to the characteristic values measured by the measuring device,

the adjusting apparatus further comprising:

a data collecting unit that, when a transfer sequence number of the articles corresponding to the characteristic values measured by the measuring device is considered as a time axis, creates time series data indicating the change of the characteristic values according to the time axis;

a translation calculating unit that performs frequency translation on time series data created by the data collecting unit so as to calculate frequency data;

an adjustment executing judging unit that, on the basis of the variation tolerance information stored in the storage device, a value indicating a degree of variation of all the characteristic values measured by the measuring devices, and the sum of power spectrum values based on the frequency data calculated by the translation calculating unit, calculates a threshold value for judging whether or not the device to be adjusted specified by the specifying unit needs to be adjusted, compares the size of a spectrum at a specified frequency, at which the abnormal characteristic value appears based on the frequency data calculated by the translation calculating unit, with the threshold value, and judges whether or not to perform the adjustment of the device specified by the specifying unit as the device to be adjusted.

7. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a data collecting unit that, when a transfer sequence number of the articles corresponding to the characteristic values measured by the measuring device is considered as a time axis, creates time series data indicating the change of the characteristic value according to the time axis;

a translation calculating unit that performs frequency translation on time series data created by the data collecting unit so as to calculate frequency data;

a setting unit that sets at least one production processing device and at least one measuring device in an operation state from among the m production processing devices and the n measuring devices; and

a number-of-devices control unit that, when the number of production processing devices in an operation state and the number of measuring devices in an operation state are a and b, respectively, where one of a and b is multiples of the other, controls the setting unit so as to change the number of a and/or the number of b,

wherein the specifying unit specifies the production processing device or the measuring device as a device to be adjusted on the basis of frequency data calculated by the translation calculating unit.

8. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 7,

wherein the setting unit manages setting information indicating the number of production processing devices in the operation state and the number of measuring devices in the operation state, and

the number-of-devices control unit acquires the setting information from the setting unit and controls to change the number of production processing devices in the operation state and/or the number of measuring devices in the operation state on the basis of the acquired setting information.

9. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 7,

wherein, when the change of the number of production processing devices or the number of measuring devices is controlled by decreasing the number of devices in the operation state, the number-of-devices control unit controls the change of the number of devices having a larger number of devices in the operation state from among the production processing devices and the measuring devices, and

when the change of the number of production processing devices or the number of measuring devices is controlled by increasing the number of devices in the operation state, the number-of-devices control unit controls the change of the number of devices having a smaller number of devices in the operation state from among the production processing devices and the measuring devices.

10. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 7,

wherein the data collecting unit receives the characteristic values of the article produced after change measured by the measuring devices while delaying by the amount of time lapse from a point of time, at which the number of the production processing devices in the operation state is changed according to an instruction from the setting unit, until the articles are produced by the production processing device in the operation state after the change and then its characteristic values are measured, and creates time series data on the basis of the characteristic values.

11. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a data collecting unit that, when a transfer sequence number of the articles corresponding to the characteristic values measured by the measuring device is considered as a time axis, creates time series data indicating the change of the characteristic value according to the time axis;

a translation calculating unit that performs frequency translation on time series data created by the data collecting unit so as to calculate frequency data;

an extracting unit that extracts a power spectrum of a frequency according to the number of production processing devices and the number of measuring devices in the operation state on the basis of frequency data calculated by the translation calculating unit;

a setting unit that sets at least one production processing device and at least one measuring device in the operation state from among the m production processing devices and the n measuring devices; and

a number-of-devices control unit that controls the setting unit on the basis of time series data created by the data collecting unit,

wherein the specifying unit specifies the production processing device or the measuring device as a device to be adjusted on the basis of the power spectrum of the frequency according to the number of production processing devices and the number of measuring devices in the operation state, which are extracted by the extracting unit;

12. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 11,

wherein the number-of-devices control unit sequentially stops the operation of any one of the production processing devices or the measuring device specified as the device to be adjusted until the integral value of the power spectrum of the frequency corresponding to the production processing device or the measuring device specified by the specifying unit as the device to be adjusted is equal to or less than a predetermined value.

13. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 7,

wherein the number-of-devices control unit calculates a standard deviation of the characteristic values on the basis of time series data created by the data collecting unit and sequentially stops the operation of any one of the production processing devices or the measuring devices specified by the specifying unit as the device to be adjusted until the calculated standard deviation is equal to or less then a predetermined value.

14. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 11, further comprising:

a masking unit that divides a mask component which is a power spectrum of a frequency according to a or b or a power spectrum of a frequency of an integer multiple of the frequency according to a or b from frequency data, and a non-mask component which is a power spectrum excluding the power spectrum of the mask component, from frequency data; and

a inverse-translating unit that performs frequency inverse-translation on any one of the mask component and the non-mask component divided by the masking unit so as to calculate the value of time series data,

wherein the number-of-devices control unit sequentially stops the operation of any one of the production processing devices or the measuring devices specified by the specifying unit as the device to the adjusted until the value of time series data obtained by performing frequency inverse-translation on the mask component by the inverse-translating unit is equal to or less than a predetermined value.

15. The adjusting apparatus according to claim 14, further comprising:

a first data output unit that outputs a value obtained by the inverse-translating unit on the basis of the non-mask component,

wherein the value outputted from the first data output unit is the number of values out of a regular range of characteristic values, in which the produced articles meet regular quality, from among the values of time series data obtained on the basis of the non-mask component, or a standard deviation of the values of time series data obtained on the basis of the non-mask component.

16. A production processing system comprising:

the adjusting apparatus according to claim 1;

m production processing devices, each of which produces the article; and

n measuring devices, each of which measures characteristic values indicating quality of the articles produced by one of the production processing devices.

17. A production processing system comprising:

the adjusting apparatus according to claim 7;

m production processing devices each of which produces articles; and

n measuring devices each of which measures characteristic values indicating quality of the articles produced by the production processing devices.

18. A production processing system comprising:

the adjusting apparatus according to claim 11;

m production processing devices each of which produces the articles; and

n measuring devices each of which measures characteristic values indicating quality of the articles produced by the production processing devices.

19. A method of controlling an adjusting apparatus, which receives characteristic values indicating quality of articles produced by one of m production processing devices from one of n measuring devices, and specifies a device to be adjusted, where m and n are natural numbers different from each other, the method comprising:

a step of, on the basis of the characteristic values received from the measuring device, judging whether or not the produced articles meet regular quality; and

a step of, if it is judged in the judging step that the produced article does not meet regular quality, specifying the device to be adjusted according to whether an abnormal characteristic value, which is a characteristic value out of a range of characteristic values when the produced articles meet regular quality, appears by m cycles or n cycles.

20. The method of controlling an adjusting apparatus according to claim 19, further comprising:

a step of when a transfer sequence number of the articles corresponding to the characteristic values is considered as a time axis, creating time series data indicating the change of the characteristic values according to the time axis;

a step of performing frequency translation on created time series data so as to calculate frequency data;

a step of setting at least one production processing device and at lease one measuring device in the operation state from among the production processing devices and measuring devices; and

a step of, when the number of production processing devices in the operation state and the number of measuring devices in the operation state are a and b, respectively, where one of a and b is multiples the other, controlling so as to change the number of a and/or the number of b,

Wherein the specifying step specifies the production processing device or the measuring device as a device to be adjusted on the basis of calculated frequency data.