Wafer production line equipment management and control method

Abstract

The invention provides a wafer production line equipment management and control method, which comprises the steps of enabling all production equipment to correspond to each process pass, and enabling the production equipment corresponding to a target process pass to be target equipment; calculating the number of dispatchable wafers of the target equipment according to the duration required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target process pass, the duration required for the target equipment to be idle and the number of wafers capable of being operated by the target equipment per hour; and judging whether the target equipment can be dispatched, if the number of the dispatchable wafers is greater than or equal to the number of the wafers which can be processed by the target equipment in one-time operation, carrying out dispatching operation, and if the number of the dispatchable wafers is smaller than the number of the wafers which can be processed by the target equipment in one-time operation, carrying out management and control operation. Accurate automatic management and control of wafer production line equipment can be realized, human intervention is reduced, productivity loss and product quality risk are effectively reduced, and production efficiency is improved.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present invention relates to the field of integrated circuit manufacturing production management, and particularly to a method for controlling and managing wafer production line equipment. Background Art

[0002] In semiconductor manufacturing production, due to the complexity of the production process and its procedures, the machines used for the process are also different. Different machines or machine groups can perform process processing on wafers of multiple different attributes, and the wafer batches that can be dispatched on different machines under the same machine group are also different.

[0003] When dispatching work, the production capacity of each station needs to be considered. At present, the main control method adopted by downstream operation equipment is manual experience control. This control method mainly has problems such as premature control resulting in production capacity waste, late control resulting in quality risks, and manual losses. In the wafer manufacturing production line, there are often situations where some equipment has too long idle waiting time, or some equipment is fully loaded while there are still a large number of wafers waiting for operation. Therefore, the production efficiency is low, and the production capacity cannot be efficiently utilized, resulting in production capacity losses. Summary of the Invention

[0004] The purpose of the present invention is to provide a method for controlling and managing wafer production line equipment, which can achieve precise automatic control of wafer production line equipment, reduce human intervention, effectively reduce production capacity losses and product quality risks caused by unreasonable equipment control, improve production efficiency, and ensure that products with high production urgency can quickly leave the line.

[0005] To achieve the above purpose, the present invention provides a method for controlling and managing wafer production line equipment, which includes:

[0006] Corresponding all production equipment to each process step, and making the production equipment corresponding to the target process step the target equipment;

[0007] Calculating the duration required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target process step and the duration required for the target equipment to become idle;

[0008] Obtaining the number of wafers that the target equipment can process per hour stored in the server;

[0009] Calculating the number of wafers that can be dispatched to the target equipment according to the duration required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target process step, the duration required for the target equipment to become idle, and the number of wafers that the target equipment can process per hour;

[0010] Determine whether the target device can be dispatched: If the number of wafers available for dispatch is greater than or equal to the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation, perform a dispatch operation on the target device. If the number of wafers available for dispatch is less than the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation, do not perform a dispatch operation on the target device, but perform a control operation on the target device.

[0011] Optionally, let the process step be i, the target process step corresponding to the target device be n, the time required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target device be Z, and the time required for the target device to become idle be T m , the number of wafers that the production equipment stored in the server can process per hour is wph i , the number of wafers that the target device stored in the server can process per hour is wph n , the number of wafers available for dispatch is W n , then W n =(Z - T m ) * wph n .

[0012] Optionally, obtain the engineering processing time T of each process step stored in the server ei ,

[0013] Then

[0014] Optionally, when the production equipment is a batch-type equipment, let the start time of the production equipment to start one operation be start time, the current time be sysdate time, and the number of wafers that the production equipment can process in one operation be X i 、the time required for the production equipment to complete the current operation is T wi ,

[0015] Then and T m = T wn .

[0016] Optionally, when the production equipment is a non-batch-type equipment, let the time required for the production equipment to complete the current operation be T qi , the number of wafers that have been processed in the production equipment is C i , the total number of wafers in the production equipment is H i ,

[0017] Then and T m = T qn .

[0018] Optionally, when wph is not stored in the server iWhen, wph i It can be calculated by the sum of the number of wafers that can be processed per hour in all operation chambers of the production equipment.

[0019] Optionally, the target equipment is controlled or dispatched through an automatic dispatching system.

[0020] Optionally, at least one production equipment corresponds to one process step.

[0021] Optionally, when at least two target equipments correspond to the target process step, calculate the number of wafers that can be dispatched for each target equipment, and select one target equipment with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers that can be dispatched. If the number of wafers that can be dispatched for this target equipment is greater than zero, determine whether this target equipment can be dispatched.

[0022] Optionally, after selecting one target equipment with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers that can be dispatched, if the number of wafers that can be dispatched for this target equipment is less than or equal to zero, perform a control operation on this target equipment, and continue to select one target equipment with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers that can be dispatched from the remaining target equipments until the number of wafers that can be dispatched for the selected target equipment is greater than zero.

[0023] With the above configuration, the present invention can simulate and calculate the number of wafers that can be dispatched for the target equipment, that is, the number of wafers that can be dispatched from the time when the target equipment becomes idle until the target batch of wafers arrives at the target process step. If the number of wafers that can be dispatched is greater than or equal to the number of wafers that can be processed by the target equipment in one operation, perform a dispatching operation on the target equipment. If the number of wafers that can be dispatched is less than the number of wafers that can be processed by the target equipment in one operation, do not dispatch and perform a control operation on the target equipment. In summary, the present invention can achieve precise automatic control of the equipment in the wafer production line, reduce human intervention, effectively reduce the production capacity loss and product quality risk caused by unreasonable equipment control, improve production efficiency, and ensure that products with high production urgency can quickly leave the line. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0024] Those of ordinary skill in the art should understand that the provided drawings are used to better understand the present invention and do not constitute any limitation to the scope of the present invention. Among them:

[0025] Figure 1 It is a logical schematic diagram of the method for controlling equipment in a wafer production line according to an embodiment of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

[0026] In this document, unless otherwise specified, terms such as "upper", "lower", "left", "right", "inner", "outer", "front", "rear", "top", "bottom", etc. are used to indicate the orientation or positional relationship based on the drawings, and are only for the convenience of describing the present invention and simplifying the description, rather than indicating or implying that the device or element referred to must have a specific orientation and operation, so it should not be construed as a limitation to the present invention.

[0027] The specific embodiments of the present invention will be described in more detail below with reference to the schematic diagrams. According to the following description, the advantages and features of the present invention will be clearer. It should be noted that the drawings are all in a very simplified form and use non-precise scales, and are only used to conveniently and clearly assist in explaining the purpose of the embodiments of the present invention.

[0028] Figure 1 is a logical schematic diagram of a method for controlling and managing wafer production line equipment according to an embodiment of the present invention. Please refer to Figure 1 , the embodiments of the present invention provide a method for controlling and managing wafer production line equipment, which includes steps S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5. The following will give a detailed description of steps S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5.

[0029] Step S1: Correlate all production equipment with each process step, and make the production equipment corresponding to the target process step the target equipment.

[0030] Step S2: Calculate the duration required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target process step and the duration required for the target equipment to become idle.

[0031] Step S3: Obtain the number of wafers that the target equipment can process per hour stored in the server.

[0032] Step S4: Calculate the number of wafers that can be dispatched to the target equipment based on the duration required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target process step, the duration required for the target equipment to become idle, and the number of wafers that the target equipment can process per hour.

[0033] Specifically, let the process step be i, the target process step corresponding to the target equipment be n, the duration required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target equipment be Z, and the duration required for the target equipment to become idle be T m , the number of wafers that the production equipment can process per hour stored in the server is wph i , the number of wafers that the target equipment can process per hour stored in the server is wph n , the number of wafers that can be dispatched is W n , then W n =(Z - T m ) * wph n . wph iFor example, it can be stored in the engineering information system server.

[0034] Furthermore, in each process step, it usually also takes engineering processing time T ei , for adjusting process parameters, etc., and the engineering processing time also needs to be deducted. Therefore, obtain the engineering processing time T of each process step stored in the server ei ,

[0035] Then

[0036] Engineering processing time T ei For example, it can be stored in the engineering information system server. It can be understood that represents the total engineering processing time required for n process steps.

[0037] For the duration Z required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target equipment, in this embodiment, the production equipment is divided into batch-type equipment and non-batch-type equipment.

[0038] The characteristic of batch-type equipment is that regardless of the number of wafers in the same equipment, the duration of one operation is fixed. For example, when processing a furnace of wafers, regardless of the number of wafers, the processing time is fixed. When the production equipment is batch-type equipment, let the start time of the production equipment for one operation be start time, the current time be sysdate time, and the number of wafers that the production equipment can process in one operation be X i , the remaining duration required for the production equipment to complete the current operation be T wi , it can be understood that the remaining duration required for the production equipment to complete the current operation is also the duration required for the production equipment to become idle,

[0039] Then and T m = T wn .

[0040] For example, the batch-type equipment can be a thin film deposition equipment. Let the furnace cavity of the thin film deposition equipment have B i positions, and each position can hold 25 wafers, for example. When the thin film deposition equipment operates, each furnace of wafers needs to be processed with several control wafers in the furnace, and the control wafers occupy 1 Batch position in the furnace cavity. Therefore, X i =(B i -1)*25. The batch-type equipment can be a wet etching equipment, for example. When the wet etching equipment operates, it does not need to process control wafers in the furnace. Therefore, X i = B i *25. B i , start time and sysdate time can be stored in the manufacturing execution system server, for example.

[0041] The characteristic of non-batch equipment is that in the same equipment, the operation duration varies with the number of wafers. The more wafers there are, the longer the operation duration for one time. For example, if a number of wafers are conveyed to the equipment for one operation, the equipment processes the wafers one by one in sequence. When the production equipment is non-batch equipment, let the remaining duration required for the production equipment to complete the current operation be T qi , the number of wafers that have been processed in the production equipment is C i , the total number of wafers in the production equipment is H i ,

[0042] Then and T m = T qn .

[0043] When wph is not stored in the server i , wph i can be calculated by the sum of the number of wafers that each operation chamber in the production equipment can process per hour. It can be understood that the number of wafers that each operation chamber of the production equipment can process per hour is stored in the server.

[0044] Step S5: Determine whether the target equipment can be dispatched: If the number of wafers available for dispatching is greater than or equal to the number of wafers that the target equipment can process in one operation, perform a dispatching operation on the target equipment. If the number of wafers available for dispatching is less than the number of wafers that the target equipment can process in one operation, do not perform a dispatching operation on the target equipment, but perform a control operation on the target equipment. For example, a control operation or a dispatching operation can be performed on the target equipment through an automatic dispatching system.

[0045] Furthermore, one process step corresponds to at least one production equipment. It can be referred to Figure 1 , when the target process step corresponds to at least two target equipments, calculate the number of wafers available for dispatching for each target equipment, and select a target equipment with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers available for dispatching, that is Figure 1 min(|W n |) in i If the number of wafers available for dispatching of this target equipment is greater than zero, determine whether this target equipment can be dispatched. As mentioned above, when the batch equipment is a thin film deposition equipment, X i =(B i -1)*25, when the batch equipment is not a thin film deposition equipment, X i = B Figure 1 where B n represents that the furnace chamber of the target equipment has B n positions, and each position can hold 25 wafers, for example. That is, when the number of wafers available for dispatching of the target equipment is W nWhen it is greater than zero, and the target device is a batch-type device and a thin film deposition device, if the number of wafers W available for dispatching n is less than X n =(B n -1)*25, the automatic dispatching system performs a control operation on the target device. If the number of wafers W available for dispatching n is greater than or equal to X n =(B n -1)*25, a dispatching operation is performed. When the number of wafers W available for dispatching of the target device n is greater than zero, and the target device is a batch-type device but not a thin film deposition device, if the number of wafers W available for dispatching n is less than X n =B n *25, the automatic dispatching system performs a control operation on the target device. If the number of wafers W available for dispatching n is greater than or equal to X n =B n *25, a dispatching operation is performed. When the number of wafers W available for dispatching of the target device n is greater than zero, and the target device is a non-batch-type device, if the number of wafers W available for dispatching n is less than the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation (i.e., the number of wafers transported into the target device in one operation), a control operation is performed. If W n is greater than or equal to the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation, a dispatching operation is performed. For a non-batch-type device, the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation, i.e., the number of wafers transported into the target device in one operation, is usually related to the specification of the wafer storage cassette. For example, if one wafer storage cassette is transported into the target device in one operation, and 25 wafers can be stored in one wafer storage cassette, then the number of wafers transported into the target device in one operation is 25. Therefore, as in Figure 1 when W n <25, a control operation is performed, and when W n ≥25, a dispatching operation is performed. It can be understood that when a process step corresponds to at least two production devices, the time spent by all production devices in all process steps before the target process step needs to be included when calculating Z.

[0046] After selecting a target device with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers available for dispatching, if the number of wafers W available for dispatching of this target device n is less than or equal to zero, a control operation is performed on this target device, and then a target device with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers available for dispatching is continuously selected from the remaining target devices until the number of wafers available for dispatching of the selected target device is greater than zero, and then it is combined with step S5 to determine whether this target device is available for dispatching.

[0047] With the above configuration, the present invention can simulate and calculate the number of wafers that can be dispatched to the target device (the present invention only simulates and calculates the data closest to actual production, which is not completely accurate and will be slightly different from actual production). That is, the number of wafers that can be dispatched from the time the target device becomes idle until the target batch of wafers reaches the target process step. If the number of wafers that can be dispatched is greater than or equal to the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation, a dispatching operation is performed on the target device. If the number of wafers that can be dispatched is less than the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation, no dispatching is performed, and a control operation is performed on the target device. In summary, the present invention can achieve precise automated control of the wafer production line equipment, reduce human intervention, effectively reduce the production capacity loss and product quality risks caused by unreasonable equipment control, improve production efficiency, and ensure that products with high production urgency can quickly leave the line.

[0048] It should be noted that the references to "one embodiment", "embodiment", "specific embodiment", "some embodiments", etc. in the specification only indicate that the described embodiments may include specific features, structures or characteristics. Moreover, such phrases do not necessarily refer to the same embodiment. In addition, when a specific feature, structure or characteristic is described in combination with an embodiment, whether explicitly described or not, implementing such a feature, structure or characteristic in combination with other embodiments is within the knowledge of those skilled in the relevant art.

[0049] It should be noted that the various embodiments in this specification are described in a progressive manner. Each embodiment focuses on the differences from other embodiments. The same or similar parts between the various embodiments can be referred to each other. For the system disclosed in the embodiment, since it corresponds to the method disclosed in the embodiment, the description is relatively simple, and the relevant parts can be referred to the description in the method part.

[0050] It should also be noted that although the present invention has been disclosed above with preferred embodiments, the above embodiments are not intended to limit the present invention. For any person skilled in the art, without departing from the scope of the technical solution of the present invention, many possible changes and modifications can be made to the technical solution of the present invention by using the technical content disclosed above, or modified into equivalent embodiments with equivalent changes. Therefore, any simple modification, equivalent change and modification made to the above embodiments based on the technical essence of the present invention without departing from the content of the technical solution of the present invention still fall within the scope of the protection of the technical solution of the present invention.

[0051] It should also be understood that unless otherwise specifically stated or indicated, the terms "first", "second", "third", etc. in the specification are only used to distinguish the various components, elements, steps, etc. in the specification, rather than to represent the logical relationship or sequential relationship between the various components, elements, steps, etc.

[0052] It should also be recognized that the terminology described herein is only used to describe specific embodiments and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention. It must be noted that the singular forms "a" and "an" used herein and in the appended claims include plural referents unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. For example, a reference to "a step" or "a device" means a reference to one or more steps or devices and may include sub-steps as well as sub-devices. All conjunctions used should be understood in their broadest sense. Also, the word "or" should be understood to have the definition of a logical "or" rather than a logical "exclusive or" unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. In addition, the implementation of the methods and / or devices in the embodiments of the present invention may include performing the selected tasks manually, automatically, or in combination.

Claims

1. A wafer production line equipment control method, characterized in that: include: All production equipment are matched with each process pass, and the production equipment corresponding to the target process pass is the target equipment; Calculate the time required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target process pass and the time required for the target equipment to be idle; Obtaining the number of wafers that the target device can operate per hour, which is stored in the server; Calculate the number of wafers that can be dispatched to the target device according to the time required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target process pass, the time required for the target device to be idle, and the number of wafers that the target device can operate per hour; Determine whether the target device can be dispatched: if the number of wafers that can be dispatched is greater than or equal to the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation, the target device is dispatched; if the number of wafers that can be dispatched is less than the number of wafers that the target device can process in one operation, the target device is not dispatched, but the target device is managed and controlled.

2. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 1, characterized in that: Let the process pass be i, the target process pass corresponding to the target device be n, the time required for the target batch of wafers to reach the target device be Z, and the time required for the target device to be idle be T m The number of wafers that the production equipment can process per hour stored in the server is wph i The number of wafers that the target device can operate per hour stored in the server is wph n , the number of wafers that can be dispatched is W n , then W n =(ZT m )*wph n .

3. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 2, characterized in that: Get the engineering processing time T of each process pass stored in the server ei , but 4. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 2, characterized in that: When the production equipment is a batch type equipment, let the time when the production equipment starts an operation be start time, the current time be sysdate time, and the number of wafers that the production equipment can process in one operation be X. i , the time required for the production equipment to complete the current operation is T wi , but and T m =T wn .

5. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 2, characterized in that: When the production equipment is a non-batch type equipment, the time required for the production equipment to complete the current operation is T qi The number of wafers that have been operated in the production equipment is C i , the total number of wafers in the production equipment is H i , but and T m =T qn .

6. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 5, characterized in that: When the server does not store wph i When wph i It can be calculated by the sum of the number of wafers that can be processed per hour in all the working chambers in the production equipment.

7. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 1, characterized in that: The target equipment is controlled or assigned via an automatic assignment system.

8. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 1, characterized in that: One process pass corresponds to at least one production equipment.

9. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 8, characterized in that: When the target process pass corresponds to at least two target devices, the number of wafers that can be dispatched for each target device is calculated, and the target device with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers that can be dispatched is selected. If the number of wafers that can be dispatched for this target device is greater than zero, it is determined whether this target device can be dispatched.

10. The wafer production line equipment control method according to claim 9, characterized in that: After selecting the target device with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers that can be dispatched, if the number of wafers that can be dispatched for this target device is less than or equal to zero, control operations are performed on this target device, and a target device with the smallest absolute value of the number of wafers that can be dispatched is continued to be selected from the remaining target devices until the number of wafers that can be dispatched for the selected target device is greater than zero.

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