Patent 6919913 was granted and assigned to Tokyo Electron on July, 2005 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A CCD camera and a laser displacement measurement apparatus are provided on a transfer apparatus for transferring a wafer between processing units. The transfer apparatus performs a predetermined image pickup in each processing unit with the CCD camera and the laser displacement measurement apparatus 62 to perform monitoring of a required place in the processing unit. According to the above configuration, it is possible to monitor the required place in the processing unit without an increase in number of components and further without consideration of a space for provision of an image pickup means.