XML Format Design for SECS-II Message Monitoring

Semiconductor manufacturing process is an equipment-intensive industry using various types of machines because of the characteristic of its manufacturing process. Production efficiency and operating rate can be raised by collecting data from the process, analyzing the data, diagnosing problems and removing possible causes of troubles. In response to the requirement, many standards and rules have been defined by SEMI for semiconductor equipment, but most of equipment manufacturers use their own communication/message protocol. Because of this, a monitoring device has to be assigned to each production facility in the manufacturing process and this results in the losses of manpower, cost and time. The present study designs a message format that can standardize messages exchanged between semiconductor equipment and the host in an integrated monitoring system that can monitor all machines in the process from the central monitoring center.