Benefits of Digitalization for Business Processes in Semiconductor Manufacturing

The global semiconductor industry is increasingly transforming manufacturing to highly automated and digitized processes. Various novel technologies based on the Internet of Things (IoT) that allow competitive advantages in the European industry emerged thanks to the advancements of digitization and its possibilities supporting the development processes within the semiconductor industry. Digitization, virtualization, digital twins and simulation applications offer the opportunity to create a smart fabrication facility. In this paper, three use cases applying new digitization technologies at the semiconductor front-end facility of Infineon Technologies Dresden supporting the digital transformation in important business processes of the factory are presented. The wafer facilities are already highly automated with respect to the material flows using hundreds of robotics, so that digitization is the next consequent step to improve the performance of the business and speed up processes within the company, especially with the help of digital twins. Besides fabrication automation using only simple robotics for tool loading and unloading, digitization of repetitive, administrative processes implies very high potentials to enhance the competitiveness of a fabrication facility or even a whole fabrication network, not only technically but also in terms of human factors.