The present invention relates to a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, management apparatus therefor, component management apparatus therefor, and semiconductor wafer storage vessel transport apparatus.
If a failure occurs in a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and production cannot continue on a semiconductor device manufacturing line, the manufacture of a product during production by the apparatus stops, resulting in a product manufacturing delay or a long product manufacturing term. The generated failure is dealt with by specifying a portion within the apparatus as a failure cause and replacing the faulty portion with a new one.
To specify a faulty portion, a portion which has caused a failure is estimated, and the faulty operation reproducibility of the estimated portion is confirmed. However, faulty portion specifying work takes a long time. When there are a plurality of candidate portions as a failure cause, these candidate portions must be confirmed in an arbitrary confirmation order, or confirmation must be repeated by predetermined procedures in accordance with the manual or instruction manual, requiring a long time and much labor of the repairer.
To avoid this, it is effective to predict a failure and perform preventive maintenance as pre-replacement of a portion which is imminent to fail. To predict a failure at a portion, the faulty portion must be specified.
However, a conventional semiconductor manufacturing apparatus or a management apparatus which manages a plurality of semiconductor manufacturing apparatuses cannot specify any faulty portion or portion to be maintained.
An example of the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus is a semiconductor wafer storage vessel transport apparatus. This apparatus is used to supply a semiconductor wafer storage vessel which stores semiconductor wafers to a manufacturing apparatus or to recover the semiconductor wafer storage vessel from the manufacturing apparatus.
The semiconductor wafer storage vessel transport apparatus comprises one or more transport vehicles for transporting the semiconductor wafer storage vessel, and a controller for controlling the operation of the transport vehicles. If a transport vehicle fails and cannot continue transport, the apparatus transport ability decreases by this transport vehicle. Alternative manual transport requires the cost of the worker. If a plurality of transport vehicles fail, the influence becomes more serious. The faulty transport vehicles must be repaired to a normal transportable state as quick as possible.
A failure once generated is dealt with mainly by specifying a portion within the transport vehicle as a failure cause and replacing this portion with a new one. To specify a faulty portion, it is desirable to specify a faulty portion, confirm the faulty operation reproducibility of this portion, and confirm the reproducibility. If impossible, a series of test works such as confirmation of the operation of the overall apparatus must be executed after a specified portion is replaced.
Faulty portion specifying work takes a long time. When there are a plurality of candidate portions as a failure cause, these candidate portions must be confirmed in an arbitrary confirmation order, or confirmation must be repeated in a predetermined order in accordance with the instruction manual or the like, requiring a long time and much labor of the repairer.
The time taken to specify a faulty portion occupies most of the repair time. An increase in specifying time influences the transport stop time of the transport vehicle, degrading the transportability of the apparatus.
As described above, if a failure occurs in a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and production cannot continue on a semiconductor device manufacturing line, the manufacture of a product during production by the apparatus stops, resulting in a product manufacturing delay or a long product manufacturing term. A failure in the apparatus during the manufacture of a product may make the product during processing defective.
In the presence of a plurality of manufacturing apparatuses capable of the same processing, the prior art cannot properly determine which of the manufacturing apparatuses is to be used to process a product, on the basis of the failure occurrence possibility of each manufacturing apparatus.
For this reason, a manufacturing apparatus which readily fails may be used in processing and fail during processing of a product, resulting in a defective product or prolonging the manufacturing term.
The prior art does not consider the failure probability of a manufacturing apparatus in maintenance for preventing any failure of a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus. Maintenance may be done even for a manufacturing apparatus with a low failure probability. To the contrary, no maintenance may be done even for many manufacturing apparatuses having high failure probabilities on the line, generating many failures at once.
Maintenances of a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus are classified into two: scheduled maintenance such as uniform periodic maintenance or predictive maintenance performed while monitoring the operation state of the apparatus; and post-failure maintenance performed every time a failure occurs.
To manage maintenance components used in post-failure maintenance, necessary components and necessary numbers of them are prepared in advance by the experience and skills of a person in charge.
In scheduled maintenance, components which should be prepared are obtained in accordance with maintenance contents, and can be prepared in advance to a certain degree. However, in advanced preparation for maintenance components upon occurrence of a sporadic failure, it is very difficult to predict a necessary component and its necessary amount.
To achieve successful inventory of maintenance components, even components which are rarely used must be excessively prepared, and many components become wasteful.
Management depending on the experience and skills of a person in charge may make a certain unexpected component unavailable due to limited personal skills, and the apparatus may have to be stopped for a long time until the component arrives.
A long-time stop of the apparatus on the manufacturing line leads to a long manufacturing term and a stop of production owing to the idle apparatus, posing a serious fault. To minimize the stop time of the apparatus, the apparatus must be immediately recovered even if it fails and stops. The repair skill is required even for an accidental failure, whereas it is also important to ensure a necessary amount of maintenance components, as needed.
However, it is conventionally very difficult to determine necessary components and their necessary amounts without the skills and experience of a person in charge, and manage maintenance components less in excessive inventory without making some component unavailable.
The prior art also suffers a problem about the maintenance time of the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus. Under the present circumstances, each portion of the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus is maintained periodically or upon occurrence of a failure, as described above. In periodic maintenance, a portion which hardly fails may be maintained to redundantly stop the apparatus. To the contrary, it is too late to maintain the apparatus after a failure occurs and a defective product is manufactured.
It is conventionally difficult to set a proper maintenance time which reflects the failure probability of each portion within the apparatus.
As described above, it is conventionally difficult to specify a faulty portion or a portion to be maintained upon occurrence of a failure in the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus.
For example, an apparatus for transporting a vessel which stores semiconductor wafers, as the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, cannot properly specify a faulty portion.
In the presence of a plurality of semiconductor manufacturing apparatuses capable of the same processing, the prior art cannot properly determine which of the apparatuses is to be used. An apparatus which readily fails may be chosen for the processing, and the cost may increase owing to a defective product or a long manufacturing term.
The prior art suffers maintenance problems. (1) Excessive components are wastefully stocked due to excessive inventory of maintenance components. (2) If an unexpected failure occurs, maintenance components cannot be obtained due to insufficient management of maintenance components or the lack of skills of the worker, and the apparatus stops for a long time with a loss. (3) The difficulty of managing maintenance components requires many persons in charge and many works.
Also, it is conventionally difficult to set a proper time for maintenance of the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus.