The semiconductor industry represents a significant challenge for digital transformation and, as such, has lessons for nearly every other industry. In a video interview with Control Engineering, Emerson’s Manish Sharma discusses the process of digital transformation in semiconductor manufacturing and leaves the viewer with some useful and applicable take-aways.
Like some other industries, semiconductor manufacturing is a huge consumer of resources, particularly power and water. In fact, semiconductors are the largest consumers of fresh water of any industry, and as the drive for smaller and smaller form factors increases, the use of both water and power escalates. At the same time, the industry is highly competitive as well as highly successful. This means the entire process of digital transformation must be analyzed, balancing costs of technology against costs of resources.
Manish describes a cycle of digital transformation that is common to every industry, progressing from monitoring to diagnostics, to prediction, to optimization to learning. He says that any company in a demanding industry, such as semiconductors, that doesn’t constantly learn, is on the way out.
The only way to focus digital transformation in any industry is to identify the top KPIs. While most companies think they’re already monitoring and collecting plenty of data, until the KPIs are identified, there’s no way of knowing if the correct parameters needed to optimize those KPIs are being monitored and gathered.
Manish goes on to describe how KPIs such as high availability that can directly impact profitability, which are usually not achieved at the machine level, can be easily and affordably accomplished through redundancy at the controller level. He also discusses the potential impact of edge computing and control on trouble-free identification, analysis, and optimization of decision-making knowledge related to KPIs.
There’s lots more to cover, including the key issue of cybersecurity and how to bring it to vital service industries such as semiconductor manufacturing. Also, easily implemented ways to analyze energy consumption and measure OEE, speed of integration and much more.
No matter your industry, you’ll want to check out this important guide to making digital transformation easy, affordable, and focused on the bottom line.
Watch Manish’s full interview to hear all of his valuable advice.