A plasma processing method using a plasma processing apparatus having a
process chamber in which a substrate is subjected to a plasma processing,
a light-receiving part, a spectrometer unit, an arithmetic unit, a
database, a determination unit for determining that an end point of
seasoning is reached as a condition of the process chamber, and an
apparatus controller. The method includes the steps of converting a
multi-channel signal output from the spectrometer unit into a batch of
output signals, finding differences between the output signals and output
signals of a preceding batch, determining the average value of the
differences in one batch, the difference between the maximum and the
minimum of the differences in one batch and the standard deviation of the
differences in one batch, and comparing the determined values with a
preset threshold.