Development of an object-based equipment controller for semiconductor equipment communications

SEMATECH developed the CIM framework specification to facilitate the creation of an integrated, common, flexible, modular object model leading to an open, multi-supplier CIM system environment in the semiconductor industry. However: all the equipment must comply with the SEMI SECS/GEM standards to interface with the CIM framework's machine management components. SEMI is developing an object-based equipment model (OBEM) standard to tab full advantage of the CIM framework. With OBEM, the equipment can communicate with the CIM framework directly by method invocation. This work develops OBEM-compliant object-based equipment (OBE) in the MES framework environment, such that this equipment can directly communicate with the a MES framework, without using the SECS/GEM protocol. Therefore, a systematic approach for developing this object-based system using object technology is proposed. The unified modeling language (UML) is adopted as the major tool for analyzing and developing the target system. A SECS/GEM adapter is also added on the OBE to enable the OBE to be integrated with a legacy factory which can only use SECS/GEM standards. A die bonder is used as example equipment for development demonstrations.