An effective recipe control and management system (RCMS) deployed in semiconductor manufacturing

As semiconductor manufacturing technology is becoming increasingly complex, hundreds of tools and process steps need to be strictly controlled and managed in the production line. The review of past wafer scrap history has revealed that one major scrap category was caused by inadvertent human error inducing un-intended change of the recipe setting in production tools. In order to get better production line yield and to assure wafer manufacturing quality, it is mandatory to prevent such human errors. Consequently, an effective recipe control and management methodology through a preventive system approach is required. At UMC, we have developed a recipe control and management system (RCMS) for this purpose. This work presents an overview of this RCMS system and management approaches. The latter includes supporting systems such as a recipe change co-sign system, job-in-cancel function, alarm disposition request (ADR), advanced pre-checking scheme on newly releasing a product for mass production, and post auditing reports on RCMS execution performance review. The RCMS and supporting systems together have provided a comprehensive & effective measure on recipe control and management in a preventive and foolproof manner.