Overview

Fab 12A introduced Industry 4.0 to support the optimization of its Chilled Water system, increasing annual energy-saving efficiency by 3% to save NT$ 29.65 million in energy costs

The semiconductor industry not only plays an important role in creating the Taiwan Economic Miracle, but also is an indispensable part of the current electronics industrial chain. In particular, the booming smart device market in recent years has increased the production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry year by year, although this increased production also means high energy consumption. As the pioneer of Taiwan's semiconductor industry, UMC, in addition to continuously improving its production capacity and manufacturing process, is also doing its best to fulfill its corporate social responsibility. Technological tools were adopted to achieve energy saving and enhanced profitability, making "energy saving and carbon reduction" not just a slogan, but concrete practices that are implemented in daily operations.

In the trend of Industry 4.0 and AI (artificial intelligence), UMC has combined the latest industrial energy management standards to digitize and visualize the overall energy utilization of the fabs. This not only allows the operators to fully grasp the current energy usage status of all equipment in the fabs, but also helps them to analyze the power efficiency differences between equipment, further improving the energy efficiency of the equipment. For example, the cleanroom is the most important facility for the production of wafers. Its operation requires a substantial amount of electricity, which is consumed by equipment such as chilled water system, air compressors, production equipment, etc. The energy consumed is astounding. In recent years, UMC fabs have applied various new technologies, such as the installation of sensors and AIoT wireless smart meters, to take the initiative in developing intelligent and optimized energy-saving control systems. This has resulted in significant cost savings from unnecessary energy waste, without affecting production capacity.

The UMC fab in the Tainan Science Park first targeted chilled water system equipment, which consumes the most energy. The system is composed of equipment such as chilled water unit, chilled water pump, cooling water pump, cooling tower, and heat recovery unit. The energy consumption of equipment may vary due temperature changes and are interconnected with each other. Coupled with external factors such as air conditions, the parameters that affect the energy consumption of the entire system may be quite complicated. With such a high-dimensional complex nonlinear chilled water system, it is difficult to find the “best energy efficiency point” through the experience of engineers or the traditional theoretical performance curve models. In order to find the best energy efficiency point for the chilled water system, the Industry 4.0 Team in the fab abandoned the traditional constant temperature supply approach, and instead, installed several IoT sensors to capture the operation parameters. By using the huge operation database generated by the "Chilled water system optimization energy saving control program" and through the help of machine variation analysis as well as the machine learning algorithms, the major impacting factors and leading indicators were found. Furthermore, by repeatedly exploring the correlations and weights between the parameters, the efficiency problem derived from complicated issues such as equipment aging non-linear system, which cannot be solved by the traditional approach, was successfully overcome. This enables each chilled water unit to dynamically adjust to the optimal state according to the external climate or on-site loading conditions, allowing the energy saving efficiency to increase by 3%, which is equivalent to save 12.232 GWh of electricity, or to save NT$ 29.65 million in energy costs.

In addition to energy saving improvements for equipment, a paperless smart inspection system was introduced, which only requires personnel to be in place to check meter readings and upload the data to the cloud, and the subsequent reports and forms to be signed will be generated automatically and instantly. This not only saves time from doing paperwork and reading meters, but also saves a substantial amount of paper required for recording data. Moreover, it also eliminates the need for printing reports, storage, and inquiry, all of which can be managed by a more environmentally friendly webpage inspection management system.

As for the maintenance of important equipment in UMC’s fabs, a large number of AIoT smart sensors have also been installed. Moreover, the Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) system has been introduced, allowing the equipment in the fabs to have visualized health indicators (HI) and equipment Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction to avoid unexpected equipment crashes and greatly improve system stability.

In 2017, UMC’s Fab in Tainan Science Park took the initiative to introduce innovative solutions such as Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence and mechanical learning to comprehensively improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, making a substantial contribution to environmental sustainability. Throughout the improvement process, UMC’s spirit of innovation and resilience, and its well-focused execution were brought into full play to put the essence of corporate citizenship into practice. The “Corporate Sustainability Committee” of UMC actively leads environmental protection, business management, and social participation to establish an energy management system as well as a related auditing system. The Energy Conservation Task Force governed by the Environmental Committee is responsible for proposing, promoting, and reviewing energy-saving goals and measures, and works in-parallel with various units of UMC’s fabs when promoting new energy-saving projects. Besides the abovementioned internal efforts, the Task Force also collaborated with external equipment manufacturers and partners to introduce new energy-saving projects and technologies, and set up a real-time energy consumption information management platform to accurately monitor the energy consumption status in each fab.

All staff in UMC’s fabs will actively cooperate with the company's policies. As long as the work can contribute to the society and the environment, our fab staff is willing make the best effort to work with all units and departments of the company to achieve the energy-saving goals set for the future.