Patent ID: 6920369

Claim:
A method of operating vacuum processing equipment which comprises: a cassette mounting apparatus capable of mounting a plurality of cassette storing wafers under a surrounding atmosphere; a plurality of process processing apparatuses for performing a series of different processes on each of the wafers; a transporting means constructed to be movable in an upward or downward direction so as to enable the wafers in said cassettes to be pulled out; a chamber enabled to be changed over to either the surrounding atmosphere or a vacuum atmosphere; a control apparatus to control pulling-out the wafers from said cassettes, transferring them through said chamber to any of said process processing apparatuses, processing said wafers one by one by said process processing apparatuses, and recovering processed wafers into the original cassettes through said chamber; and at least two sets of wafer processing routes including a plurality of process processing apparatuses for performing each of said series of different processes, wherein the method comprises: performing a state judgment for each of the process processing apparatuses of each set for performing each of said series of different processes, to judge whether the operation is valid or invalid; releasing only the invalid process processing apparatuses in response to said judgment; reconstructing said two sets of wafer processing routes for performing said series of process processing through utilization of said process processing apparatuses valid in operation; and continuing the wafer processing through utilization of said reconstructed two sets of wafer processing routes.