Patent ID: 7341954

Claim:
An operation status determination method for determining an operation status of a second plasma processing apparatus when a processing condition employed in a first plasma processing apparatus is applied to the second plasma processing apparatus, the method comprising the steps of: (a) obtaining a first operation status data group including processing parameter values measured during a plasma process performed in accordance with a first processing condition applied to the first plasma processing apparatus; (b) obtaining a second operation status data group including processing parameter values measured during a plasma process performed in accordance with a second processing condition applied to the first plasma processing apparatus; (c) obtaining a third operation status data group including processing parameter values measured during a plasma process performed in accordance with the first processing condition applied to the second plasma processing apparatus; (d) carrying out a principal component analysis by using at least one of the first, the second and the third operation status data group obtained; (e) plotting principal component scores corresponding to two principal components selected among a plurality of principal components obtained by the principal component analysis using at least one of the first, the second and the third operation status data group in a two-dimensional coordinate system with axes of the two principal components; (f) calculating the centers of principal component score distributions respectively corresponding to the first, the second and the third operation status data group in the two-dimensional coordinate system; (g) calculating a movement vector from the center of the principal component score distribution corresponding to the first operation status data group to the center of the principal component score distribution corresponding to the third operation status data group; (h) setting an area of the principal component score distribution corresponding to the second operation status data group in the two-dimensional coordinate system; (i) by moving the area of the principal component score distribution corresponding to the second operation status data group along the movement vector, setting an area of a predicted distribution of principal component scores corresponding to two principal components of processing parameter values measured during a plasma process performed when the second processing condition is applied to the second plasma processing apparatus; and (j) by actually applying the second processing condition to the second plasma processing apparatus, determining whether or not the principal component scores corresponding to the two principal components of the processing parameter values measured during the plasma process performed in accordance with the second processing condition are included in the area of the predicted distribution.