Patent ID: 6885906

Claim:
A vacuum processing method for a vacuum processing apparatus including a plurality of vacuum processing units for performing a vacuum process, a loading/unloading unit capable of changing between an atmospheric air and vacuum atmosphere for use in loading and unloading a wafer to and from the plurality of vacuum processing units, an atmospheric carrier capable of mounting at least one first cassette containing wafers which are to be transferred in a preset transferring order, and another cassette containing wafers to be processed on an emergency basis, a transfer unit capable of transferring wafers, and a controller for controlling operations of the vacuum processing apparatus comprising the steps of: effecting automatic control of processing of at least one wafer from the at least one first cassette; in response to a request for emergency processing of a wafer of the another cassette, temporarily stopping the automatic control of the at least one wafer from the at least one first cassette including issuing an interruption request so as to complete processing of the at least one wafer of the first cassette in at least one of the plurality of vacuum processing units, and returning the processed wafer to the first cassette via the loading/unloading unit and transfer unit; initiating emergency processing by transferring an emergency wafer from the another cassette to less than all of the plurality of vacuum processing units via the transfer unit and the loading/unloading unit; and completing processing of the emergency wafer and returning the processed emergency wafer to the another cassette via the loading/unloading unit and the transfer unit.