A management apparatus is connected to a mount substrate manufacturing line including at least a print apparatus, a component mounting apparatus, and a reflow apparatus, through a network. The management apparatus instructs at least one of apparatuses that are at a more upstream side than the reflow apparatus in a mount substrate manufacturing line, to perform at least any one of an operation relating to maintenance, an operation relating to calibration, and an warm-up operation, based on first data relating to a period of time necessary to complete preparation for performing a process by the reflow apparatus.

The disclosure describes methods and systems for operating a manufacturing process with a concurrent real-time simulation of the manufacturing process via a digital twin model. Sensor data indicative of parameters of an ongoing manufacturing process are input into the digital twin model, and used to predict an output of the manufacturing process. The predicted output is compared to a target output. One or more trained machine learning models are used to determine a corrective action to be implemented by a controller of the manufacturing process to minimize any deviation from the target output.

A wafer processing apparatus includes a controller connected to a first robot and a second robot. The controller controls the first robot so that the wafer is placed on a first load lock stage in such a way that the center of the wafer is shifted from the center of the first load lock stage by a first position shift amount and another wafer is placed on a second load lock stage in such a way that the center of the wafer is shifted from the center of the second load lock stage by a second position shift amount. The controller controls the second robot so that the second robot simultaneously conveys two wafers between the first and second load lock stages, and a first processing stage and a second processing stage.

Since single and dual-arm tools behave differently, it is difficult to coordinate their activities in a hybrid multi-cluster tool that is composed of both single- and dual-arm tools. Aiming at finding an optimal one-wafer cyclic schedule for a treelike hybrid multi-cluster tool whose bottleneck tool is process-bound, the present work extends a resource-oriented Petri net to model such system. By the developed Petri net model, to find a one-wafer cyclic schedule is to determine robot waiting times. By doing so, it is shown that, for any treelike hybrid multi-cluster tool whose bottleneck tool is process-bound, there is always a one-wafer cyclic schedule. Then, computationally efficient algorithms are developed to obtain the minimal cycle time and the optimal one-wafer cyclic schedule. Examples are given to illustrate the developed method.

A method for determining abnormal equipment in semiconductor manufacturing system includes processing wafers. A measurement data relating to wafers at respective processing steps and at each tool stack run count for respective tools is provided. The method also includes performing statistical and correlation analysis on the production history data and the measurement data to determine multiple parameters including bad ratio (Rb) and good ratio (Rg) for each tool. A first bad-to-good probability ratio (R1) for each tool is obtained by dividing Rb by Rg at the tool stack run count. A second bad-to-good probability ratio (R2) of each tool is an overall probability ratio of Rb to Rg of each tool. A first correlation coefficient (C1) is provided for the measurement data corresponding to the tool stack run count. A second correlation coefficient (C2) is provided for the first bad-to-good probability ratio (R1) corresponding to the tool stack run count.

A first embodiment is a method for semiconductor process control comprising clustering processing tools of a processing stage into a tool cluster based on processing data and forming a prediction model for processing a semiconductor wafer based on the tool cluster. A second embodiment is a method for semiconductor process control comprising providing cluster routes between first stage tool clusters and second stage tool clusters, assigning a comparative optimization ranking to each cluster route, and scheduling processing of wafers. The comparative optimization ranking identifies comparatively which cluster routes provide for high wafer processing uniformity. Further, wafers that require high wafer processing uniformity are scheduled to be processed along one cluster route that has a high comparative optimization ranking that identifies the one cluster route to have a highest wafer processing uniformity, and wafers that do not require high wafer processing uniformity are scheduled to be processed along another cluster route.

A method for controlling temperatures in an epitaxial reactor for use in a wafer-production process is provided. The method is implemented by a computing device coupled to a memory. The method includes transmitting, to a heating device in a first zone of the epitaxial reactor, an output power instruction representing a base output power. The method additionally includes determining an actual time period for a temperature in the first zone of the epitaxial reactor to reach a target temperature, determining a difference between the actual time period and a reference time period, determining an output power offset based on the difference, and storing the output power offset in the memory in association with the heating device.

A wafer component supply device supplying a wafer component and a feeder, such as a tape feeder supplying an electronic component, are set in a component mounting machine. When the wafer component is to be inverted and mounted on a circuit substrate, the wafer component supply device allows the wafer component present on an inverted supply head to be sucked by a mounting head of the component mounting machine at a position where the supply head and a stage are moved down by a vertical movement mechanism. An order of an operation for inverting the wafer component and mounting the wafer component on the circuit substrate and an operation for mounting the feeder component on the circuit substrate is set so that the supply head and the mounting head do not interfere with each other; and an operation for moving down the supply head and the stage, allowing the wafer component to be sucked by the supply head, and inverting the wafer component is performed so as to overlap with an operation for sucking and mounting the feeder component by the mounting head.

A method includes receiving, by a processing device, position error data from one or more motors of a process chamber. The method further includes performing preprocessing of the position error data. The method further includes transforming the position error data to a frequency domain. The method further includes determining, based on the frequency domain position error data, that a vibration fault has occurred in connection with the process chamber. The method further includes performing a corrective action in view of the vibration fault.

A control device controls the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus having modules based on an operation from a user on an operation terminal displaying an operation screen of the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus. The semiconductor manufacturing apparatus includes: ports to which the operation terminal is to be connected; and detectors detecting the operation terminal connected to the ports, the ports serving as the detectors or the detectors being provided around the ports. The control device stores restriction information, the restriction information indicating controllable modules corresponding to the detectors in units of the detector; and when the operation terminal is connected to one of the ports and the operation terminal is detected via the corresponding detector, transmits screen information about the operation screen to the connected operation terminal based on the restriction information, the screen information including information indicating the controllable modules corresponding to the detector used for the detection.