Patent ID: 7630785
Filing Date: 2009-12-08
Classification: G05B,Y02P

Abstract:
1. A substrate processing system that concurrently executes processing in two pipeline processing systems, in each of which a plurality of processing target substrates are sequentially transferred one at a time to a plurality of process modules to undergo processing, comprising: a first set of process modules made up with a plurality of process modules used in a first pipeline processing system; a second set of process modules made up with another plurality of process modules used in a second pipeline processing system; a single transfer mechanism equipped with two transfer arms so as to be able to replace a processing target substrate having undergone the processing with a next processing target substrate by accessing each of said process modules only once; and a control unit that: sets module cycle periods, each corresponding to one of said process modules and each representing the sum of a substrate stay time over which a single substrate needs to stay in the process module to undergo processing, a delivery time and a retrieval time required to transfer the substrate or the sum of the substrate stay time, the delivery time, the retrieval time and a post processing time if post-processing is to be executed immediately following retrieval, to a uniform module cycle length by adjusting the length of the substrate stay time in correspondence to each process module before executing the processing on the substrate; executes control for said transfer mechanism so that said transfer mechanism accesses said first set of process modules in an order matching the sequence in which the substrate is processed in said first pipeline processing system in correspondence to each module cycle; executes control for said transfer mechanism so that said transfer mechanism accesses said second set of process modules in an order matching the sequence in which the substrate is processed in said second pipeline processing system in correspondence to each module cycle; and permits concurrent processing in said two pipeline systems by executing access control for process modules in said first pipeline processing system and access control for process modules in said second pipeline processing system with a time lag matching a predetermined time adjustment width.