Among apparatuses for manufacturing devices such as semiconductor devices or flat panel displays, an exposure apparatus is one of the apparatuses whose performance greatly influences productivity of devices. The productivity of devices in an exposure apparatus greatly depends on services in a broad sense such as installation and maintenance of the apparatus upon selling it to a customer, optimization of apparatus use conditions under the device and production conditions of a customer, upgrading of software and hardware, and consultation concerning the method of using the apparatus as well as the apparatus performance. A customer generally considers the contents of services and decides on the best manufacturer. From this viewpoint, these services become important. These services are conventionally offered in the presence of a serviceman or the manufacturer in a customer's factory, or by a personal visit, or by communication using telephone, facsimile, mail, or electronic mail. Along with an increase in the number of apparatuses in operation, an increase in apparatus operating area, and sophistication of service contents, human and temporal loads are increasing. In the future, any countermeasure must be taken to maintain providing advanced services quickly. As one of the countermeasures for solving this problem, a remote maintenance system using the Internet is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-97966. According to this system, information concerning trouble of industrial equipment is acquired via the Internet or registered in a database. A trouble remedy is searched in the database, thereby improving the efficiency of apparatus maintenance.
It is insufficient as services to simply acquire information concerning trouble, and to search the database for the corresponding remedy and to provide only the remedy to the customer. To quickly determine the use conditions of an apparatus installed in a customer's factory or the like, the performance of this apparatus must be simulated using the data of the apparatus at present. Most of the apparatus data involved the know-how unique to the apparatus supplier and cannot often be disclosed to the customer. The apparatus supplier receives a customer's request and must inevitably perform a simulation in response to this request and send back the simulation result to the customer. It takes a long period of time until the use conditions of the apparatus are determined. This may interfere with device production. Condition optimization in the device manufacture is not only limited to correction of the use conditions of the apparatus, but also extends to correction of a mask. This prolongs the optimization time.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds