Patent ID: 8594821

Claim:
A method for identifying an incompatible combination of manufacturing tools in a manufacturing facility, the method comprising: receiving measurements of products that were subject to a manufacturing process involving a plurality of manufacturing tools, said measurements pertaining to a performance characteristic of each product; evaluating whether each manufacturing tool implemented in said manufacturing process individually performs normally, on average, when implemented in a sequential combination with other tools, based on the received measurements; responsive to evaluating each manufacturing tool implemented in said manufacturing process individually performs normally, evaluating whether a first combination of the manufacturing tools operating together in a sequential process perform normally based on the received measurements, said evaluating said first combination comprising: selecting, among the received measurements, measurements of products that were produced according to a sequential process implemented by the first combination of manufacturing tools; computing a first average or a first median of the selected measurements of products produced by the first combination of manufacturing tools; computing, based on the received measurements, an additional average or an additional median of measurements of products that were produced according to said sequential process by each combination of tools not including the first combination of the manufacturing tools; computing at least one objective function over the computed first average or median and the computed additional average or median; repeating the selecting, the computing the first average or the median, the computing the additional average or the median, and the computing objective function for all products and all combinations of manufacturing tools; and selecting a combination of the manufacturing tools whose computed objective function is optimal; and generating a notification message, based on the evaluating that each manufacturing tool individually performs normally but the first combination of the tools perform abnormally, wherein a computing system including at least one processor and memory device performs one or more of: the receiving, the evaluating whether each manufacturing tool individually performs normally, the evaluating whether the first combination of the manufacturing tools together perform normally, and generating the notification message.