NOTICE: This Standard or Safety Guideline has an Inactive Status because the conditions to maintain Current Status have not been met. Inactive Standards or Safety Guidelines are available from SEMI and continue to be valid for use.

The purpose of this Guide is to define the IT equipment automation/integration interface of process, automation and metrology equipment used in photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing. It intends to produce economic benefits for both manufacturers and equipment suppliers. On the one hand the standard is expected to release PV manufacturers from the burden to specify the interface with each equipment supplier and to facilitate an increased level of functionality across all manufacturing equipment. On the other hand, it will reduce the effort equipment suppliers currently have to spend to develop and maintain a variety of equipment interfaces. Altogether, it is expected to reduce both costs and time required for the ramp-up of new production lines and thus supports the industry’s ability to grow.

This Guide references a collection of SEMI and other standards, and gives hints how to apply them in PV manufacturing environment in order to establish a reliable and extensible framework for the IT integration of equipment.

This Guide for PV equipment communication interfaces applies to equipment used in PV manufacturing lines; independent of the base technology used (such as crystalline or thin film). It is mainly intended to be applied to cell manufacturing, module manufacturing or frontend/backend manufacturing—however it is not limited to these areas of application.

The scope of this Guide is limited to the IT interface used to integrate equipment within factory automation systems.

This Guide can be applied to inline equipment as well as batch equipment. Basically, a piece of equipment can be seen as a mechanical entity in the factory which plays a role in the manufacturing process. It can be used to transport, store or process material and can have a modular structure. Figure 1 is an example structure of a piece of equipment. A host is a computer or a network of computers which exchange information with the equipment in order to fulfill manufacturing tasks.

Referenced SEMI Standards (purchase separately)

SEMI E5 — SEMI Equipment Communications Standard 2 Message Content (SECS-II)

SEMI E10 — Specification for Definition and Measurement of Equipment Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM)

SEMI E30 — Generic Model for Communications and Control of Manufacturing Equipment (GEM)

SEMI E37 — High-Speed SECS Message Services (HSMS) Generic Services

SEMI E37.1 — High-Speed SECS Message Service Single Selected-Session Mode (HSMS-SS or HSMS-SSS)

Revision History

SEMI PV2-0709E (editorial revision)

SEMI PV2-0709 (first published)