Precise statistical process control within an advanced technology, high-volume, precise manufacturing environment is crucial. In fabrication facilities, typically semiconductor or wafer fabrication facilities, current fabrication equipment monitoring processes require technical employees (TE's) or manufacturing (MFG) operators to apply constraints between equipment identifications (EQP IDs) and a data collection operation (DCOP), wherein the EDP IDs and the DCOPs are available in a statistical control system such as a process manufacturing integration system (PROMIS) available from the PROMIS System Corporation. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,386 LIN, PROMIS “is a technically advanced, factory automation and management system including a shop floor control system” that “monitors, and controls activity in complex process manufacturing environments.”
However, existing monitoring processes using the PROMIS require TE's to memorize relationships between each piece of equipment and a permissible DCOP associated with the piece of fabrication equipment.
In a day-to-day equipment monitoring activity within a fabrication facility, MFG operators must be aware of a corresponding status between a DCOP and a specific piece of fabrication equipment. The MFG operators track the DCOP status either by memorizing the status or by writing the status on a piece of paper because no automatic status tracking exists.
MFG operators manually input an equipment id and an available (memorized) DCOP id into a PROMIS GUI. However, the PROMIS GUI of existing an existing PROMIS does not provide an automated direct relationship between a piece of fabrication equipment and a DCOP defined in PROMIS, thus, the MFG operator is required to memorize an existing status between a DCOP and an equipment ID.
As a result, often DCOPs were mistakenly associated to a piece of equipment having an impermissible DCOP restraint. A mis-operation of the TE can easily occur because using a TE's memory to relate equipment ID's and DCOPs often causes incorrect DCOPs to be applied. Additionally, a TE may not have been aware of a new version of a DCOP, supplied via PROMIS, resulting in additional operator error. Thus if an equipment engineer that defines a new version of a DCOP does not communicate to a MFG operator that a new version of a DCOP has been released, a serious mis-operation will occur.
Using an existing monitoring system, a piece of fabrication equipment's status may be changed to down by an enterprise management system when a DCOP ID is incorrect. It then takes approximately 30 minutes for a TE to clear an incorrect DCOP and to bring the piece of fabrication equipment back online.
A typical wafer fabrication facility may perform 360 monitoring operations per day, wherein some pieces of fabrication equipment within the FAB is monitored twice a day, thus an error due to mis-operation of an incorrectly keyed-in DCOP ID can lead to significant and costly downtime within the FAB.
Currently existing monitoring system take about 20 minutes of production time to unfreeze each DCOP, wherein a process engineer manually updates and checks that the unfreezing operation will not impact lot processing. Such a process results in a total of loss of about 1.7 hours of manpower per day.
It is desirable to provide an automatic system and method for associating an equipment identification with a data collection operation to eliminate the need for manufacturing operators to manually memorize names of each data collection operations performed to monitor a piece of fabrication equipment.
It is further desirable to provide an automatic monitoring system that automatically generates an available DCOP to prevent mis-operations caused by MFG operators.
It is further desirable to provide an automated DCOP methodology chart to reduce operation time of updating DCOPs and chart identifications within a fabrication facility having a user-defined monitoring system.
It is further desirable to automatically search and pinpoint a relation between an equipment ID and a DCOP, thereby enhancing overall operation performance and thus preventing mis-operation of DCOPs performed on pieces of fabrication equipment disposed within a fabrication facility.
It is further desirable to provide a monitoring system that automatically filters out unfrozen or older DCOPs, thereby eliminating the need to manually update unfrozen DCOPs.
It is further desirable to provide a process manufacturing integration system configured to create a DCOP control methodology chart to allow equipment engineers to maintain a DCOP control methodology chart, the DCOP control methodology chart providing a related mapping table of a chart identification, an equipment identification, a DCOP identification, and a product area location and to provide the related mapping table to a MFG operator.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds