ABC Semiconductor Case Study: Reducing Costs for Facilities Monitoring on a Multi-Building Site

ABC Semiconductor Case Study:

Reducing Costs for Facilities Monitoring in a Multi-Building SiteMicrel Gas Cylinder

Case Study

1/14/086 February 2008 - DRAFT

SUMMARY –I think this is too long I think for a summary and could be divided into sections for easy skimming – it should be past/current tense as I’ve revised

Micrel is a publicly traded semiconductor company with its fab operations based in San Jose, CA.

CHALLENGE:

  • Most of the fabMicrelABC Semiconductor operates three buildings, including a fab, totaling approximately 50,000 sq-ft on’s fab was constructed in the 1980’s and the facilities and related automation technology is representative of that periodand is considered a legacy fab without current automation technology. their corporate campus distributed over 25 acres. Supporting facilities equipment include systems for cooling water, scrubbers, air dryers, chillers, boilers, circulating pumps, fans, filters and HVAC equipment.
  • Many of the equipment only have manual gauges, which are labor intensive and error prone to monitor. Lack of automation means important trends may not be captured which can lead to unplanned downtime of the production processes.
  • Troubleshooting problems takes longer when there is no easily accessible historical data trend.

They constantly assess technology upgrades to reduce cost and improve productivity to remain competitive. Managing the use of process gases, which is labor intensive and prone to gas shortages and/or waste, was identified as a key area of potential improvement.

Micrel is constantly assessing technology upgrades to reduce cost and improve productivity to remain competitive with current day practices.

Managing the use of process gases, traditionally labor intensive and prone to gas shortages and/or waste, has been identified as a key area of potential improvement.

Management considered installing transducers and monitoring equipment to automate gas rounds, but found the cost of installation, wiring, and disruption to ongoing operations prohibitive with poor payback.

SOLUTION:

  • In November 2007, MicrelABC Semiconductor evaluated and decided to proceed with the installationinstalled of new automation technology which did not incur any disruption to ongoing processes and required minimal installation cost. . The solution, a non-invasive wireless sensor which “clips-on” to existing gauges and/or transducers, is one-third the costcosts 70% less than of alternative solution ofusing traditional transducers installation.

RESULTS:

The new technology is a non-invasive wireless sensor which easily “clips-on” to existing gauges and/or transducers, with a resulting installed cost only one third of traditional transducers.

  • Based on initial resultsreturn on investment - the first two months of use, baesd on how much time?, MicrelABC Semiconductor estimates annual savings to be in the range of $250130,000,000K, which correlates to an investment payback time of approximately six6six months.

Situation/Background

As new semiconductor fabs continue to be built globally, there are hundreds of ”mature” fabs in the United States and thousands worldwide that are still the workhorses of the industry. These legacy fabs, which are often twenty years or older, produce millions of chips for a huge array of electronics every day. And while many newer fabs have automation features built in to enable peak efficiency and performance, older fabs seek new solutions to increase productivity, reduce downtime, and decrease operating costs.

One such company is Micrel, based in San Jose, California, a leading IC solutions manufacturer for the analog, Ethernet and high bandwidth markets. The company manufactures high performance analog, power, advanced mixed-signal and radio frequency semiconductors, high speed communication, clock management, and Ethernet switch and physical layer transceiver integrated circuits. End markets served include cell phones, portable and enterprise computing, enterprise and home networking, wide area and metropolitan area networks and industrial equipment. Founded in 1978, Micrel has been profitable for 25 of its 26 years with revenues of $280M and regional sales and support offices, sales offices, distributors and technology design centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Challenge: Facilities MonitoringGas Level Monitoring

For MicrelABC Semiconductor, based in San Jose, CA, it is critical to minimize unplanned downtime at its core San Jose fab. . At tThis facilityfacility, has three buildings totaling about 50,000 sq-ft distributed over 25 acreswhich houses 500 semiconductor manufacturing tools, wafer production requires hundreds of process recipes that use various combinations of gases to produce desired chips. . It is critical that the facilities equipment for this site be working correctly or the production processes will be affected resulting in production scrap or unplanned downtime. The facility support systems include cooling water, deionized water, HVAC, scrubbers, exhaust and venting, compressed air etc. Specific equipment include pumps, compressors, fans, filters, chillers, boilers, air handling units etc.

It is critical that the required gases are provided for each wafer process step or the output will be unusable and system downtime occurs as a result. Essentially, semiconductor production hinges on the availability of these gases so no chances can be taken -- ever. The gases themselves, supplied by about 300 different cylinders (see Fig 1), are a precious commodity, ranging in cost from $800 to $17,000 per cylinder. – I am not sure it is necessary to show what the cylinders look like

Figure 1 – ABC Semiconductor Facilities Area (typical)

Fig. 1 – Micrel Gas Cylinders

For years, like many older fabs, maintaining proper operation of the facilities systems meant conducting manual monitoring rounds to read gauges on specific pieces of equipment and log them. Because of the large number of equipment and the distributed nature of the site over several buildings, this was a very labor and time consuming process which was error prone due to its manual nature. gas cylinder levels has been a manual process. At MicrelABC Semiconductor, once every 12-hour shift, an employee armed with paperpen and a clipboard would spend two to three hours performing such rounds.

However, even with the labor effort, they would miss important trends because gauges were read only two times per day. When failures do occur, troubleshooting and recovery took a longer time because historical trends and logs were not easily available. Increased downtime, or impaired yield were often the result.went to each gas cylinder location to manually check the pressure regulator gauges and/or the weigh scale depending on the gas type. This process took about 4 hours each time or about 8 manlabor-hours per day. By 2001, a bar code system was employed to identify each gas cylinder, but an employee was still required to manually read and record each data point, so the process was still error- prone (we haven’t discussed errors…should do that before we mention it here?) and labor-intensive.

In addition to monitoring gas levels manually, to further reduce risk of low or empty cylinders, gases were typically? It is or isn’t I would think… replaced on a regular schedule – even if a cylinder may be a quarter or even a third full, just to be safe. -this is redundant. Despite these precautions, gas supply disruptions still periodically occurred due to unforeseen circumstances such as cold weather impacts which can condense a gas. Any other circumstances? Such disruptions often resulted in lost yield and process downtime, which translated into additional operational expense.

Altogether, these labor, gas, and downtime related expenditures, year after year, were continuing to add up and needed to be addressed to keep the fab competitive. Operations management sought new ways to better utilize manpower, ensure gases were expended before replacing bottles, and proactively detect situations which cause downtime.

Evaluation of Traditional Automation Solution Too Costlyshow them don’t tell them

One solutionABC Semiconductor that was explored considered was to replacereplacing the manual gauges with all-new transducers and wiring them to their building automation system. based gas panels, which would automate the monitoring of gas levels. However, in most cases this required the affected process to be shut down and depressurized while old gauges were removed, transducers installed, leak-check performed, wires run, and I/O panels installed. Documentation and drawings must be updated, and occasionally, this effort may even invoke a much larger rework of the entire wiring system to conform to the latest safety and fire codes when a legacy subsystem is significantly modified.

making this change would require Micrel to stop the affected processmanufacturing production? for up to a few days – I thought it was a lot longer? Guess not. while it reconfigures gas piping and retests for leaks and safety. For some cases, thThis can also e replacement can in turn triggerinvolve ana even broadermuch larger rework of the entire wiring system in order to conform to the latest safety and fire codes – required by government regulations when a legacy subsystem is significantly modified.

MicrelABC Semiconductor chose not to implement this solution due to the prohibitive cost of the equipment, the installation and rework labor, and most of all, the associated downtime and lost production, which together added upaltogether averaged was to over $4,0003,500 per gas cylindermonitoring point (or about $200,000 to instrument 50 points)..

The Cypress Systems Solution

In 2007, MicrelABC Semiconductor learned of new “Wwireless Ggauge Rreaders” and “wireless transducer reader” why the quotes? technologies that can provide automated gas cylindergauge monitoring without the high cost and disruption of installing traditional wired transducers based panels. . The Wwireless Ggauge Rreaders non- invasively do not require the existing manual regulator gauges to be removed. Instead, they simply “clip” onto the front of the legacy manual gauge, and transmits the reading wirelessly to a central server (Figure. 2). . Similarly, the wireless transducer readers simply attach to existing gas weigh scales without the need to remove or replace the scale. Pre-set aAlarms to notify of low or critically low gas levelsminimum and maximum readings? may be programmed to alert operator stations, pagers, or cell phones of excursions when required.

Figure 2 – Non-Invasive Mounting for Wireless Gauge Reader Non-Invasive Mounting

MicrelABC Semiconductor electeddecided to implement thisthe Cympress solution because it incurreds no process downtime, requireds minimal installation labor and training, and did not does not involveno need retesting and revalidation for leaks. . The resulting installed cost at $1,250 per point (list pricet) (or $62,500 to instrument 50 points) is only aboutjust 35% of the cost of traditional transducer panels s (Figure. 3).

Figure. 3 – Comparison of Installed Cost per Point
for Traditional Transducers vs. . Wireless Gauge Reader

ResultsBenefits

In Q4tehe fall of 2007, MicrelABC Semiconductor decided to install a mix of 10050 Wwireless Ggauge Rreaders and wireless transducer readers from Cypress Systems to monitor its most critical process gasesfacilities equipment, along with the Cypress Systems’ Blue Box RReceiverer (BBR-100), which sends the data to MicrelABC Semiconductor’s existing network and operator stations. . Each data point required between 10 and 30approximately 15 minutes to install, and did not involve breaking any pressure seals anywhere in the gas system or any process downtime. Additionally, future integration of the data with existing operator software is also possible via industry standard OPC and/or BACNet protocols. Within the first two months of operation, the following benefits were identified: of any sort.

Maybe we should have bullet points for results since there are a number of them? It would be easier to read.

As a result

  • The Cypress Solution enabled of this system, Micrel was able to rReduce the manpower devoted to making gas rounds by one 50% of a full-time equivalent technician, who could then may then be redeployed to other more pressing tasks. .
  • In addition, Micrel estimates thataDecrease average troubleshooting time for incidents by 10-12 hours per month gas consumption wouldto be reducedreduction by about 10% in the first year. .
  • Minimize unplanned downtime by combination of predictive monitoring and proactive maintenance, and also faster time-to-recovery for incidents.

Finally,

even

during its first month of operation, the new system was able to detect trends and fluctuations in gas pressure due to unseasonably cold weather in January and helped to avoid future downtime and yield loss. this doesn’t seem to go with the other points and is a bit awkward.

Altogether, Tthe combined operational benefitsreturn on investmentsavings are estimated to be in the range of $200,000$-130250,000K per year (Figure. 4). . The resulting investment payback period is only six months (for $62,500 initial installed cost).

 ComparedWhile with the cost of installing the system at $125,000K, the payback period is only 6 to-8 months (Figure. 5).

Figure 4. – Savings Derived from Wireless Gauge Reader and Wireless Transducer Reader Solution – I can’t revise this figure but a few comments - do we really need to have all this explanation? Such as “basis” and “comments”? You’ve already explained it in the text and I think you might get into too many details, they may have a different situation and you are locking yourself into this one. The opint is to give an example of savings. I would eliminate at the least the “Comments” call “basis” “Cost Basis”. We also need a title for Labor Savings, etc. How about “Cost Area”?

Figure 5. – Payback Analysis for Wireless Gauge Reader and Wireless Transducer Reader

About Cypress Systems Corporation:

Cypress Systems is a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor (NYSE: CY) with a mission to introduceprovide leading edge technologies to legacy plants and buildings , with minimal cost and disruption. . WeThe company produces products and solutions to optimize energy and water use, improve uptime, reduce scrap, and lower maintenance costs. .I thought cost would be higher up.

Cypress Systems combines the latest technology knowhow from Cypress Semiconductor with our team’s extensive industry and automation experience to deliver solutions with tangible savings and attractive payback.

For more information, pPlease visit:

or call (408) 943-2644.

About Micrel, Inc.: - I already did this in the text, I think this is unnecessary. I would just put a brief paragraph,, like “for more inforation about Micrel, visit…or call…”

Micrel Inc., is a leading global manufacturer of IC solutions for the worldwide analog, Ethernet and high bandwidth markets. The Company’s products include advanced mixed-signal, analog and power semiconductors; high performance communication, clock management, Ethernet switch and physical layer transceiver ICs. Company customers include leading manufacturers of enterprise, consumer, industrial, mobile, telecommunications, automotive, and computer products. Corporation headquarters and state-of-the-art wafer fabrication facilities are located in San Jose, CA with regional sales and support offices and advanced technology design centers situated throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. In addition, the Company maintains an extensive network of distributors and reps worldwide. Web:

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