Diagnostic support system and diagnostic system of equipment

• US 5,319,580 A
• Filed: 11/25/1991
• Issued: 06/07/1994
• Est. Priority Date: 11/24/1990
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Renesas Electronics Corporation
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Sakata, Masao, Tsuyama, Tsutomu, Shimoyashiro, Sadao, Iwasaki, Takemasa
• Primary Examiner(s): Harvey, Jack B.
• Assistant Examiner(s): PEESO, THOMAS R
• Application Number:
  US07/796,677
• Time in Patent Office: 925 Days
• Field of Search: 364/579, 364/571.01, 364/141, 364/148, 395/912
• US Class Current: 702/185
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 3/00 Registering or indicating the condition or the working of machines or other apparatus, other than vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 706/912 Manufacturing or machine, e.g. agricultural machinery, machine tool

Abstract

An equipment is diagnosed by monitoring a career of operations of the equipment necessary for diagnosing the equipment and a condition of the equipment during the operation, monitoring information on equipment operations and information on variations in operation of the equipment having started operation for a data gathering purpose, selecting some of the gathered data, classifying the selected data based on rules, computing characteristics of variations in equipment state during the operation of the equipment and diagnosing the data on the basis of criterion references for the characteristics prescribed by the rules as an equipment diagnostic procedure.

Claims

1. An equipment diagnostic support system comprising:

means for storing, with corresponding time sequence data, a career of recording data representing movements of manufacturing equipment'"'"'s parts, and a career of recording process condition parameters used when processing a product produced by the manufacturing equipment;

means for displaying both of the careers; and

means for receiving an input to select data from said displayed careers and displaying selected data from both displayed careers with a common time axis.

5. A diagnostic support system for a semiconductor manufacturing equipment according to claim 1 with said semiconductor manufacturing equipment being an apparatus for creating layers comprising a sequencer for controlling the operation thereof and a residual-gas analyzer for detecting gas components therein, wherein said means for acquiring information in time sequence is provided with a function for taking in:

information on a condition of said semiconductor manufacturing equipment'"'"'s operation, comprising outputs of said residual-gas analyzer with time information added thereto, and

information on operations of said semiconductor manufacturing equipment'"'"'s parts, comprising information on movements of said equipment'"'"'s parts as output by said sequencer with time information added thereto.

2. A diagnostic system for a manufacturing equipment comprising:

means for acquiring, with corresponding time sequence data, information on a condition of the manufacturing equipment'"'"'s processing operation and movements of the equipment'"'"'s parts during the operation of the equipment;

means for storing predetermined diagnostic rules; and

means for determining whether or not an event prescribed by the diagnostic rules has occurred by checking the information under conditions prescribed by the diagnostic rules;

said means for storing predetermined diagnostic rules storing the diagnostic rules for each diagnostic item indicating an event to be diagnosed with the diagnostic rules including;

rules for classifying data for specifying ranges of data related to an event, characteristic computation expressions for computing characteristics inherent in an event, and judgement rules comprising criterion references for judging the computed characteristics; and

said means for determining having a function of extracting data for each diagnostic item from the data acquired in time sequence in accordance with the rules for classifying data, computing characteristics of the extracted data using the characteristic computation expressions, checking the computed characteristics against the criterion references of the judgement rules, and obtaining corresponding judgement results.

3. A diagnostic system according to claim 2 having means for displaying messages describing actions to be taken from the judgement results.

4. A diagnostic system according to claim 2 capable of outputting control information for changing the operation of the equipment in accordance with the judgement results.

6. A diagnostic support system of a semiconductor manufacturing equipment comprising the steps of:

acquiring data, with corresponding time sequence information, representative of information on;

a processing condition of said semiconductor manufacturing equipment'"'"'s operation, and movements of said equipment'"'"'s parts; and

outputting the data, with corresponding time sequence information, representative of the movements and the information on a condition of the equipment'"'"'s operation with time axes thereof representing a common time axis.

7. A diagnostic system for diagnosing a semiconductor manufacturing equipment comprising the steps of:

storing, with corresponding time sequence data, information on a condition of said semiconductor manufacturing equipment'"'"'s operation during a start-up operation after being halted, and information on variations in position with time of said equipment'"'"'s parts;

treating both kinds of the information as data having a common time axis, and computing time-related characteristics of variations in an operating condition of said equipment with respect to time-related movements of said parts;

comparing the characteristics to criterion references; and

specifically describing a state of said equipment based on results of the comparison.

8. A diagnostic system for diagnosing a semiconductor manufacturing equipment comprising:

means for recording movements of parts of said equipment required for judging events to be diagnosed during an operation of said semiconductor manufacturing equipment;

means for programming the movements of said parts in said semiconductor manufacturing equipment;

means for executing the programmed movements of said parts in said semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and storing, with corresponding time sequence data, information on variations in position of said parts and information on a processing condition of said semiconductor manufacturing equipment'"'"'s operation; and

means for treating both kinds of information as data having a common time axis, computing characteristics of variations in condition of said equipment with movements of said parts, comparing the characteristics to criterion references, and specifically describing a state of said equipment based on results of the comparison.