Patent ID: 8463415

Claim:
A method of determining start of lot processing to be applied in a substrate processing system that includes a substrate processing chamber for performing desired processing on a substrate provided therein, a first substrate receiving vessel for receiving product substrates of each lot and a second substrate receiving vessel for receiving dummy substrates, the method comprising: a step of storing, in a memory, processing conditions of each lot in the first substrate receiving vessel and a maximum usable number of dummy substrates in the second substrate receiving vessel; a step of counting a used number of the dummy substrates in the second substrate receiving vessel; and a determining step which includes: calculating a number of dummy substrates required to process all the product substrates of a next lot in the first substrate receiving vessel based on processing conditions of only the next lot, the processing conditions stored in the memory, adding the calculated number of the dummy substrates required to process all the product substrates of the next lot to the counted used number for the dummy substrates to find an added value, and determining whether the added value exceeds the maximum usable number of the dummy substrates stored in the memory.