Patent ID: 8382910

Claim:
A cleaning method for a substrate processing system having a housing chamber in which a substrate is housed, the substrate processing system being adapted to perform predetermined processing in succession on substrates of a plurality of lots and carry out a cleaning treatment of the housing chamber, the cleaning method comprising: a number-of-times setting step of setting beforehand a predetermined number of execution times of the predetermined processing corresponding to a timing in which the cleaning treatment is to be executed; a processing setting step of setting beforehand a type of the predetermined processing for each lot and a type of the cleaning treatment for each lot, which is suited to the predetermined processing; a type determining step of determining whether or not a type of the predetermined processing for a preceding lot is the same as a type of the predetermined processing for a subsequent lot of two successive lots; a number-of-times accumulating step of accumulating number of execution times of the predetermined processing in a case that the type of the predetermined processing for the preceding lot is the same as the type of the predetermined processing for the subsequent lot; and a cleaning step of executing, when the accumulated number of execution times of the predetermined processing reaches the predetermined number of execution times, the cleaning treatment of a type set for a lot including a substrate on which the predetermined processing is performed immediately before execution of the cleaning treatment, wherein each of the plurality of lots includes a plurality of substrates subjected to the predetermined processing, and wherein in said cleaning step, when the substrate subjected to the predetermined processing corresponding to the predetermined number of execution times set beforehand is not a last substrate for a lot including the substrate, the cleaning treatment of the type set for the lot including the substrate is performed before completion of the predetermined processing on all the substrates included in the lot.