JP2003032764A - Maintenance device, maintenance system and maintenance method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a maintenance device, a maintenance system and a maintenance method capable of preventing an operation information from leaking to the outside needlessly. SOLUTION: Even when the transmission of information for maintenance is requested from the management device 201 of a vendor office 200, a person in charge of maintenance in a user plant 100 judges whether or not to permit the transmission for the transmission request, and only in the case that the transmission is permitted, only the permitted information for the maintenance is transmitted from a maintenance terminal 140 through the Internet 300 to the management device 201. Thus, the information for the maintenance is effectively prevented from leaking to the outside needlessly.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention acquires operating information indicating the operating status of one or a plurality of devices installed in a user factory, and provides the operating information to a vendor who performs maintenance of the devices as needed. The present invention relates to a maintenance device that transmits via a communication line, a maintenance system including the device, and a maintenance method.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, after a variety of equipment manufactured by equipment manufacturers, for example, equipment for manufacturing semiconductor devices and liquid crystal display devices, is installed in a user factory, the equipment manufacturer or sales company (hereinafter referred to as "vendor"). Is performing maintenance on the device. Specifically, for maintenance such as equipment trouble response and periodic maintenance, vendor maintenance personnel respond by telephone or facsimile when trouble occurs, or maintenance personnel regularly or urgently visit the equipment installation factory and perform maintenance. I was going. However, due to the lack of maintenance personnel, the fact that user factories are scattered in remote areas has made it more difficult to deal with problems and respond more quickly to regular maintenance than before. .

In order to solve such a problem, various maintenance systems have been proposed in recent years. For example, in the invention (remote maintenance system for industrial equipment) described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-97966, a host computer installed in a user factory monitors the operating status of the industrial equipment in the factory, and there is a problem, for example. In this case, the device status information is collected and the operating information is transmitted to the vendor and reported via the Internet. On the other hand, the host computer of the vendor is not able to respond to the communication from the host computer installed in each factory.
We are waiting on time and when the host computer of the user's destination sends operating information due to trouble,
Appropriate measures are taken based on the operation information.

[0004]

The operation information indicating the operation status of the device includes, for example, sensor information indicating the sensor state of the limit switch or flow meter of the device, and the operation information between the device and the host computer. It contains multiple maintenance information such as communication information and recipe information that shows the operation procedure preset by the user for each device. Depending on the type of trouble that occurred, only some maintenance information is needed and the vendor side In some cases, sufficient measures can be taken, and it is not always necessary to inform the vendor of all operating information. In addition, the operation information may include information that the user does not want to leak to the outside (hereinafter referred to as “confidential information”), and it is not necessary to send the information to the vendor side as described above. Have a desire to omit the information. However, in the above conventional technique,
When there was a problem, the operating information indicating the operating status of the device was sent to the vendor as it was, and it was impossible to satisfy such a user's request.

Here, in order to satisfy the user's request, for example, when trouble occurs, it may be possible to send only the operating information excluding the confidential information to the vendor side, but depending on the kind of trouble that has occurred. May not be able to take trouble countermeasures on the vendor side without referring to confidential information, and it is not an appropriate countermeasure to uniformly limit operating information from users.

As described above, the prior art does not give sufficient consideration to the handling of operating information, and it is difficult to prevent the confidential information contained in the operating information from leaking to the outside more than necessary. It was

The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a maintenance device, a maintenance system, and a maintenance method capable of preventing operating information from unnecessarily leaking to the outside.

[0008]

According to the present invention, operation information indicating the operating status of one or a plurality of devices installed in a user factory is acquired, and the operation information is communicated to a vendor who maintains the devices as necessary. A maintenance device that transmits by line, and in order to achieve the above purpose, when the vendor requests transmission of operating information, all or part of the operating information is sent to the vendor only when the user gives permission to send the operating information. (Claim 1).

In the invention configured as described above, even if there is a transmission request of operation information from the vendor, the user side determines whether or not the transmission is permitted in response to the transmission request,
Only when the transmission permission is given, all or part of the operation information is transmitted to the vendor. Therefore, it is possible to effectively prevent the operation information from being leaked to the outside unnecessarily.

Here, the operation information may include a plurality of pieces of maintenance information, and the vendor may request transmission of all or part of the maintenance information. In other words, the vendor may request only the maintenance information required for maintenance from the user side. In this case, the user side needs to send a part of the maintenance information requested by the vendor from the operation information or the maintenance information. It may be configured to give permission to send everything to the vendor. In this way, of the operating information, information that the vendor does not request to send is not sent to the vendor, and it is possible to effectively prevent information that the vendor has not requested to send by mistake. (Claim 2)

Further, it may be configured such that whether or not each of the maintenance information requested by the vendor to be transmitted is transmitted to the vendor. By doing so, it is possible to set whether or not the maintenance information is individually transmitted, and it is possible to more clearly reflect the intention of the user (claim 3).

Further, since the maintenance device which receives the operation information can predict the occurrence of the device trouble based on the operation information, when the device trouble is predicted to occur at a predetermined probability or more, the trouble occurrence forecast is issued by the vendor. If the side is notified, such trouble can be prevented from occurring and active maintenance becomes possible (claim 4). Note that it is efficient to send the trouble occurrence forecast to the vendor through a communication line (claim 5).

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a maintenance device according to any one of claims 1 to 5 installed in a user factory, and a management device installed in a vendor for managing the device. The maintenance device and the management device are equipped with a communication line so that information can be communicated between them (claim 6).

In the maintenance system configured as described above, by providing the above maintenance device, even if the vendor requests the transmission of the operation information, the user side always permits the transmission of the transmission request. Whether or not the operation information is unnecessarily leaked to the outside is effectively determined.

Further, the present invention is a maintenance method for maintaining one or a plurality of devices installed in a user factory, and in order to achieve the above object, a step of acquiring operation information indicating an operation status of the devices, When a maintenance request for a device is made, the process of notifying the maintenance request to the vendor who performs the maintenance of the device, and when the vendor requests the transmission of operation information, determines whether to permit transmission to the vendor. However, only when it is determined that the transmission is permitted, the step of transmitting all or part of the operation information to the vendor is provided (claim 7).

In the invention thus configured, when the user gives a maintenance request to the vendor side, the vendor side requests the user side to transmit the operation information, but the user side determines that the transmission to the vendor is permitted. Only when it does, all or part of the operation information is sent to the vendor. Therefore, it is possible to effectively prevent the operation information from being leaked to the outside unnecessarily.

[0017]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS FIG. 1 is an overall configuration diagram showing an embodiment of a maintenance system according to the present invention.
Reference numeral 100 in the figure indicates a user factory. In this user factory 100, a manufacturing apparatus for manufacturing a liquid crystal display device as a device, for example, a coating apparatus, a heat treatment apparatus,
A developing device is installed. Here, for convenience of explanation, in the figure, the manufacturing line 110 equipped with the device A is shown.
And a production line 120 including the equipment B and the equipment C are shown.

In this manufacturing line 110, a system control bus 111 is provided, and the controller 11 for controlling the device A on the system control bus 111.
2 and the system controller 113 are connected. Further, the controller 112 is connected to the notebook terminal 114 by wireless communication.

Further, the manufacturing line 120 is basically constructed in the same manner as the manufacturing line 110. That is, in the production line 120, the system control bus 121 is provided, and the system control bus 1
21 to the controller 122 that controls the device B
The controller 123 for controlling the device C and the system controller 124 are connected to each other. Further, in the manufacturing line 120, one notebook type terminal 125 is provided for the controllers 122 and 123, and they are connected by wireless communication.

Further, the user factory 100 is provided with a maintenance router 130. The system control buses 111 and 121 are electrically connected to the maintenance router 130, and the maintenance router 130 of the present invention is provided. The corresponding maintenance terminal 140 is connected by wireless communication. Therefore, the maintenance terminal 140 passes the maintenance router 130 to each of the controllers 112, 113, 122, 12 and 12.
3,124 can be accessed to monitor operation information indicating the operating status of each of the devices A to C.
The operation information in the user factory 100 is the following three types of maintenance information (sensor information, communication information, and recipe information) (1) Sensor information: limit switches and flow meters provided in each of the devices A to C. (2) Communication information (log information) between each controller 112, 122, 123 and a host computer (not shown) that controls the entire user factory 100, (3) ) Recipe information indicating operation procedures, process conditions, and the like set by the user in advance for each of the devices A to C is included.

On the other hand, the above devices A to C are installed in the user factory 10
As shown in the figure, a management apparatus 201 for managing the devices A to C on the vendor side is installed in the vendor office 200 that supplies the data to the device 0 to maintain the devices A to C. The management device 201 is capable of two-way communication with the maintenance terminal 140 installed in the user factory 100 via a communication line such as the Internet 300.
As will be described below, various information is exchanged with the maintenance terminal 140 to perform maintenance on the devices A to C.

In the maintenance system configured as described above, the maintenance terminal 1 installed in the user factory 100
40 is a controller 112, 122, 12 periodically.
3 to obtain operation information (sensor information, communication information, and recipe information) to monitor the operation status of each of the devices A to C. Then, when it is confirmed that a trouble has occurred, countermeasures for the trouble are executed according to the operation flow shown in FIG. Hereinafter, description will be given with reference to FIGS. 2 and 3.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing a trouble response operation in the maintenance system of FIG. In this maintenance system, as described above, the maintenance terminal 1
When the 40 confirms the trouble, the contents of the trouble are notified to the management device 201 of the vendor business office 200 via the Internet 300 to request the vendor business office 200 for maintenance (step S11). As described above, in this embodiment, the maintenance terminal 140 automatically notifies the trouble content, but the maintenance staff of the user factory 100 confirms the trouble message appearing on the display (not shown) of the maintenance terminal 140. The content of the trouble may be manually notified to the vendor office 200 side by telephone, FAX transmission, electronic mail, or the like.

On the other hand, in the vendor office 200, the management device 201 receives 24 communications from the user factory 100.
When standing by on time and receiving the trouble notification (maintenance request) in step S21, the user factory 100 is requested to send the maintenance information necessary for analyzing the trouble content (step S22). .
Again, the transmission request to the user is sent to the Internet 30
However, as in the case of a trouble notification from the user, the person in charge of management of the vendor office 200 manually requests the transmission of maintenance information by telephone, fax, or email. It may be carried out on a regular basis.

When the transmission request is made in this way, the maintenance terminal 140 of the user factory 100 receives the transmission request (step S12), and the maintenance terminal 140 for maintenance requested by the vendor is displayed on the display screen 141 (FIG. 3) of the maintenance terminal 140. In addition to displaying the type of information (here, three types of sensor information, communication information, and recipe information as shown in the figure), as shown in FIG. 3, "A request for transmission of the following maintenance information has been received from the vendor. "Allow transmission?" Is also displayed and whether the maintenance personnel of the user factory 100 is allowed to transmit information, that is, whether to transmit the information requested by the vendor. A determination is made as to whether or not (step S13). Although three types of maintenance information are requested to be transmitted here, another maintenance information is requested to be added depending on the content of the trouble.
Alternatively, only two types of maintenance information may be requested. That is, in this embodiment, not all the operation information is requested to be transmitted, but only the maintenance information corresponding to the trouble content in the operation information is requested to be transmitted.

When it is determined in step S13 that the maintenance person at the user factory does not transmit all the information, the maintenance terminal 140 transmits a message indicating that the transmission is not permitted to the management apparatus 201 of the vendor office 200. (Step S14). Then, the management device 201, which has received the notification of the disapproval in step S23, executes a predetermined countermeasure for the disapproval.

On the other hand, when the maintenance person determines in step S13 that the information transmission is permitted, the "permit" button is selected for the item for which the transmission is permitted on the screen of FIG. 3, and the transmission is not permitted. For the items, select the "not allowed" button and then click the send button with the mouse (not shown)
The maintenance information is selected, for example, by clicking (step S15). Then, the maintenance terminal 140 makes a step S1.
The maintenance information selected in 5 is transmitted to the management apparatus 201 via the Internet 300 (step S1).
6).

Then, in step S24, the user factory 1
Management device 2 that has received the maintenance information sent from 00
01 executes a trouble analysis based on the information (step S25), obtains the cause of the trouble occurrence, and then executes an appropriate countermeasure corresponding to the cause. For example, if it is a software-related trouble, consider whether it can be dealt with by correcting the operation memory content of the controller or the software which is the object of the trouble via the Internet 300, and if possible, by remote control online. Provides data update and correction software. Further, when the online processing cannot deal with the problem, the maintenance person at the user's place may be instructed to deal with the problem by using means such as electronic mail, facsimile, and telephone. For serious troubles that cannot be solved even then, the maintenance personnel of the vendor office 200 may visit the user factory 100 to take measures.

As described above, according to this embodiment, even if the management apparatus 201 of the vendor office 200 makes a transmission request for maintenance information, the maintenance staff of the user factory 100 transmits the transmission request in response to the transmission request. If the transmission permission is given, only the maintenance information given by the permission is transmitted from the maintenance terminal 140 to the management apparatus 201 via the Internet 300. It can be effectively prevented from leaking outside when necessary.

Further, in this embodiment, not all the operation information but the information requested by the vendor to be transmitted, that is, only the selected maintenance information is transmitted, so that there is no transmission request. Information can be prevented from being transmitted to the vendor side. Moreover, even if the maintenance information requested to be transmitted is configured to be transmitted by the person in charge of maintenance of the user factory 100 after determining whether or not it should be further transmitted, it is important for the user. It is possible to prevent such information from being erroneously transmitted to the outside, and it becomes possible for the user side to perform more advanced information management.

By the way, in the above embodiment, the maintenance terminal 1
When the trouble occurrence is confirmed based on the operation information collected by the 40, the trouble contents are notified to the vendor business office 200. However, if the trouble occurrence occurs at a probability higher than a predetermined probability, the trouble occurrence occurs. May be notified to the management device 201 of the vendor office 200 to prevent a trouble from occurring. More specifically,
It suffices to execute the trouble forecasting notification operation shown in FIG. Hereinafter, the trouble occurrence forecast will be described with reference to FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing the operation of informing the trouble occurrence forecast by the maintenance terminal of FIG. In the maintenance terminal 140, a predetermined unit process is completed in step S31, for example, each controller 1 for each cycle time.
The sensor information is acquired from 12, 122, and 123, and the torque of the motor is monitored as the operating status of each of the devices A to C (step S32).

Then, in the next step S33, the variation in torque is calculated. Here, the reason for calculating the variation in torque is that the devices delivered to the user factory 100 are generally delivered to the same user or to different users, and are installed in each device. This is because the drive mechanism unit may fail in some of the devices due to the method of assembling and adjusting each device. Particularly, when a failure occurs in the drive mechanism unit, a load on a drive source such as a servo motor that drives the failed device is increased, and a fluctuation in the drive torque is increased. Therefore, the failure of the drive mechanism unit can be predicted to some extent by calculating the variation in torque. Therefore, in this embodiment, the failure of the drive mechanism unit is predicted by obtaining the variation in torque and determining whether the variation is within the allowable range (step S34).

While it is determined in step S34 that the driving mechanism is within the allowable range, the possibility of failure of the drive mechanism is low, and the process returns to step S31 to repeat a series of operations. On the other hand, when it is determined that the maintenance terminal 140 does not fall within the allowable range, the maintenance terminal 140 notifies the management apparatus 201 of the vendor office 200 via the Internet 300 that a trouble has occurred, that is, the drive mechanism unit of the device that is out of the allowable range determines a predetermined value. It is notified that a failure may occur with the above probability (step S35), and the process returns to step S31. The management device 201 that has received the trouble occurrence forecast (maintenance request) proceeds with processing in the same manner as when the trouble occurs.

As described above, according to this embodiment, the failure prediction can be performed in advance to prevent the failure, so that the line down time of the user factory 100 can be shortened.

The present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment, and various modifications other than those described above can be made without departing from the spirit of the present invention. For example, user factory 100 and vendor office 20
The case where both 0 and 1 are communicated one-to-one has been described, but multiple user factories and vendor offices 2
The present invention can also be applied to the case where two-way communication with 00 is performed in a many-to-one manner.

In the above embodiment, the user factory 100 and the vendor office 2 are connected via the Internet 300.
However, the communication line is not limited to the Internet 300, and may be configured to perform two-way communication with a dedicated communication line, for example.

In the above embodiment, the case where the operation information includes three pieces of maintenance information has been described, but the type and number of maintenance information are not limited to this, and it is arbitrary. There is no end.

Further, in the above embodiment, the maintenance terminal 140
Functions as the "maintenance device" of the present invention, other control devices, for example, a host computer of the user factory 100 may function as the "maintenance device".

Further, in the embodiment shown in FIG. 4, the occurrence of trouble is predicted based on the variation in torque, but the occurrence of trouble may be predicted based on other operating information.

[0041]

As described above, according to the present invention, even when the vendor side requests the user side to transmit the operation information, the operation information is transmitted to the vendor side as it is as in the prior art. Instead, it is configured to send all or part of the operating information to the vendor only when there is permission to send it to the vendor, so it is possible to effectively prevent the operating information from being leaked to the outside unnecessarily. can do.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall configuration diagram showing an embodiment of a maintenance system according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing a trouble response operation in the maintenance system of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a screen displayed on a maintenance terminal during the trouble response operation of FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a notification operation of a trouble occurrence forecast.

[Explanation of symbols]

100 ... User factory 140 ... Maintenance terminal (maintenance device) 200 ... Vendor office 201 ... Management device 300 ... Internet (communication line) A to C ... Equipment

   ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued front page    F-term (reference) 5B089 GA01 GB02 JA35 JB16 KC47                       KC58 KE02 MC02                 5H223 AA05 AA06 BB05 BB08 CC06                       DD03 DD07 DD09 EE01 EE06                       EE11 EE22 EE29 EE30                 5K048 AA15 BA23 BA25 DC01 DC03                       EB03 EB08 EB12 HA02

Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. A maintenance device that acquires operation information indicating an operation status of one or a plurality of devices installed in a user factory, and transmits the operation information to a vendor who performs maintenance of the devices as necessary through a communication line. In, when there is a request from the vendor to transmit the operation information,
A maintenance device, wherein all or part of the operation information is transmitted to the vendor only when transmission permission is given by the user. 2. The operation information includes a plurality of pieces of maintenance information, and a part of the maintenance information requested to be sent from the vendor in the operation information or a part of the operation information with transmission permission from a user as a transmission condition. The maintenance device according to claim 1, wherein the entire device can be transmitted to the vendor. 3. The maintenance device according to claim 2, wherein it is possible to select whether or not to transmit each of the maintenance information requested to be transmitted from the vendor to the vendor. 4. A trouble occurrence forecast of the device is predicted based on the operation information, and a trouble occurrence forecast is notified when the device trouble is predicted to occur at a predetermined probability or higher. Maintenance equipment as described. 5. The maintenance device according to claim 4, wherein the trouble occurrence forecast is transmitted to the vendor through the communication line. 6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the user factory is installed.
The maintenance device according to any one of 1 to 5 and a management device that is installed in the vendor and manages the device, and information communication can be performed between the maintenance device and the management device through the communication line. A maintenance system characterized by: 7. A maintenance method for maintaining one or a plurality of devices installed in a user factory, the method comprising: acquiring operation information indicating an operation status of the device; A step of notifying a maintenance request to a vendor who performs maintenance of the device, and when there is a transmission request of the operation information from the vendor,
A maintenance method comprising: determining whether or not to permit transmission to the vendor, and transmitting all or part of the operation information to the vendor only when it is determined to permit transmission. .