Patent ID: 8041100

Claim:
A failure-cause equipment determination system for determining an equipment unit that has caused failure occurrence in a production line in which one or more steps are executed on substrates by using one or more equipment units that can execute the individual steps, respectively, wherein the production line includes an inspection step for acquiring defect distribution information representing positions of defects on each of the substrates after an end of specified steps, the system comprising: a classification result acquisition section for classifying the substrates for each one of defect distribution patterns by using the defect distribution information as to the individual substrates; a causal equipment candidate determination section for determining causal equipment unit candidates that have caused failure occurrence out of the plurality of equipment units based on a classification result acquired by the classification result acquisition section and production history information for determining equipment units that have processed the substrates in the individual steps, respectively; a first defect distribution image forming section for forming a first defect distribution superimposed image by superimposing defect distributions on the individual substrates processed by the causal equipment unit candidates on one another; a second defect distribution image forming section for forming a second defect distribution superimposed image by superimposing, on one another, defect distributions on individual substrates processed by each of equipment units other than the causal equipment unit candidate in one same step as that executed by the causal equipment unit candidate; and a first display section for displaying the first defect distribution superimposed image and the second defect distribution superimposed images in contrast on one display screen.