Use of process flow in semiconductor manufacturing

Despite the usefulness in semiconductor manufacturing of various systems such as CIM and the Virtual Factory, process/device engineers must learn how to operate such systems, which is very time consuming. These concerns are due to differences in data format and difficulties in information exchange among systems. In next-generation device development, represented by the 1G DRAM, in order to achieve improvements in synthetic production efficiency, information standardization is needed. In particular, standardization of "process flow" is the most important factor in integrating various systems associated with semiconductor manufacturing. This paper describes a system which integrates various systems using standardized process flow data and five interface programs.