A key example of a major industry grappling with issues of sustainability is semiconductor manufacturing. In a recent interview in the Control Engineering Expert Interviews series, Emerson’s Manish Sharma discusses this key industry and the role that digital transformation can play in achieving sustainability.
Manish says foundries are getting bigger to become more competitive. There is a seemingly insatiable market appetite, and tremendous pressure on foundries to meet their contractual obligations, satisfy new demands and gain market share. The semiconductor industry is extremely capital expenditure (capex) intensive. The chip sizes are getting ultradense at the nano scale. To deliver the new generation chips, machines are getting more sophisticated.
Semiconductor processes use huge amounts of various mixes of corrosive gases and ultrapure water and must meet extremely high standards for clean rooms where fabrication takes place. The demand on power and water is high and the need to optimize power consumption and recirculate ultrapure water is paramount.
It’s accepted that digital transformation is the key to semiconductor industry sustainability. Typical business KPIs that digital transformation helps executives solve are enhanced production for better capex utilization, reduced waste for lower operating expense and non-stop operations for enhanced overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Plant managers are more interested in predicting failures, scheduling maintenance of machines on a condition basis (instead of having scheduled-based maintenance), having more deterministic control of output per shift, inventory control and other manufacturing parameters.
Emerson has an excellent range of solutions for semiconductor industry digital transformation, including sensors, valves, actuators, regulators, edge controllers and industrial PCs running Emerson PACEdge, and the Emerson Plantweb Data Lake. Emerson Movicon.NExTTM SCADA supports a wide range of protocols and user-developed third-party drivers to provide fully integrated central monitoring and control.
The interview has a large amount of information on digital transformation that’s applicable to many industries faced with sustainability issues. Click here to see the video and read Manish’s answers to additional questions.