Approach to shorten ULSI development lead-time by effective process condition editing and dynamic lot-progress control systems

We have developed a CIM system for ULSI R&D lines, which has the following functions to improve the efficiency in editing process condition such as a process flow and a process recipe; (1) altering a process condition of many trial lots simultaneously, (2) reducing the operation of editing wafer specifications of each process step. Moreover, our CIM system controls dynamically the progress of trial lots by distinguishing two kinds of process steps which operators and engineers take charge of. By our CIM system, the time when an engineer edits the process condition of trial lots has become less than 1/5th in comparison with the previous CIM system.