Patent ID: 8916229

Claim:
A substrate processing method by a substrate processing apparatus transporting substrates to a module group in which each substrate is transported and placed one by one based on a transportation sequence determined by a transportation means and processing the substrates, where the substrate processing apparatus includes: a plurality of unit blocks stacked with each other each performing the same processing with respect to the substrates; a carry-in module provided in each of the plurality of unit blocks and configured to carry-in a substrate; a carry-out module provided in each of the plurality of unit blocks and configured to carry-out a substrate; a multi module including a plurality of modules included in the module group, having the same transportation sequence, and performing the same processing with respect to the substrates; a rear module provided at a downstream side of the module group; and a substrate placing part provided at the downstream side of the module group and configured to dispose a plurality of substrates, the method comprising: (4) providing the substrates to the carry-in module of each of the plurality of unit blocks alternately in a predetermined sequence in a normal state; determining whether one or more modules of the multi module included in a unit block are disabled and, at the same time, one or more modules are usable in the multi module included in the unit block; when it is determined that one or more modules of the multi module included in the unit block are disabled and, at the same time, one or more modules are usable in the multi module included in the unit block: (5) (5-a) providing the substrates to the carry-in module of each of the plurality of unit blocks in a providing sequence such that a substrate is provided to a selected carry-in module capable of placing the substrate most rapidly among the plurality of unit blocks, the providing sequence being different from the predetermined sequence of the normal state; (5-b) in each of the plurality of unit blocks, transporting the substrates sequentially to the module group of the unit block with the carry-in module by the transportation means to be delivered to the carry-out module according to the providing sequence of the substrates to the carry-in module; (5-c) extracting the substrates from the carry-out module; and (5-d) transporting the substrates either directly to the rear module from the carry-out module or to the rear module after transporting the substrates to the substrate placing part first, thereby transporting the substrates to the rear module according to the predetermined sequence in which the substrates are provided to the carry-in module in the normal state while ignoring the providing sequence of the substrates generated when one or more modules of the multi module included in the unit block are disabled such that a total processing time is reduced as compared to a case in which the substrates are processed only with the predetermined sequence.