Research project started: Resilient supply chains for the semiconductor industry

A major research project on the digitalization of supply chains in the semiconductor industry started in May upon the delivery of the letters of funding confirmation. More than twenty partners from the semiconductor industry and its suppliers have teamed up in the Semiconductor-X project under the consortium management of Intel Deutschland and Fraunhofer IFF to make the complex supply chains in this sector more sustainable and more resilient. What is more, new digitalization solutions will enable distributed and sovereign data exchange. The project with a total budget of around €30 million is being funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action with EU funds (DARP) as part of its Manufacturing-X funding program for the digitalization of industry supply chains.

As digitalization increases and demand grows, sustained supply bottlenecks for semiconductors have been occurring with greater frequency since 2021. New productive capacities cannot be provided as quickly and existing capacities cannot be expanded as much as demand is growing. Several hundred to well over one thousand globally distributed operations are required over a longer period to manufacture semiconductor products. Supply chain disruptions and global and geopolitical events complicate planning and impede manufacturing. Issues, such as sustainability and due diligence in supply chains, are also confronting European companies in particular with new challenges.

The semiconductor industry is especially facing challenges: Its value partners are few in number but highly specialized and have very complex manufacturing processes. The planning and control of these processes is extremely involved and expensive. Organizing particularly resilient, sustainable, adaptive and capacity-efficient processes constitutes another challenge. Antitrust requirements additionally complicate data exchange among companies that operate internationally.

The Semiconductor-X project comes into play here with its development of digitalization structures and solutions. It is based on the groundwork laid by the Catena-X project, which addressed such challenges to supply chains in the automotive industry and produced innovative approaches to collaborative data exchange. The objective of this project is to develop digital twins for the semiconductor industry, which digitally model the supply and value chain and enable sovereign and secure data exchange, including their connectivity to other value partners.

Solutions for secure and efficient data exchange among a manufacturing chain’s partners will be developed in several implementation clusters. One key activity will be the establishment of resilient value chains for chiplet manufacturing by heterogeneous integration, especially during the assembly of complex IC packages. Furthermore, the foundation will be laid for new digital services and collaboration models for optimized operation and increased quality in the manufacturing process. The goal is to connect partners through resilient network nodes that make it possible to maintain their capability to operate and deliver during crises. Digital tools and aids for this will be developed based on digital twins. Related data models and open-source software solutions as well as their availability in the data ecosystem will also be part of the project. What is more, issues of sustainability will be explored. Among other things, a method for calculating and optimizing the carbon footprint, including energy and water consumption, along the entire value chain will be developed. Technical solutions will be delivered for the sovereign exchange of information and for rules for secure and filtered access to partners’ internal databases.

The project is being funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action with EU funds (DARP) as part of its Manufacturing-X funding program that funds specific technological contributions to the development of a cross-industry data ecosystem. The semiconductor industry plays a key role here. It is a key element of the value chain for numerous other industries that use semiconductor products.

Sonja Pierer, Country Manager for Intel Deutschland: “The factories planned in Magdeburg will create a knock-on effect with this project too and reveal how important and relevant the R&D sector was to the siting decision. We are thrilled to have a strong partner at our side with Fraunhofer IFF to implement this project successfully together with everyone involved.”

“The semiconductor industry supplies key technologies for the German and the European economy. The digitalization of the whole value chain being pursued with the project Semiconductor X will help manufacturers, such as Intel, the supplier industry and the companies of the downstream industries achieve more resilience in the whole supply chain and more efficient use of valuable resources. Secure data exchange with concomitant data sovereignty will additionally open new opportunities for collaboration and the creation of innovative business models,” says Prof. Julia Arlinghaus, Director of Fraunhofer IFF.

Fraunhofer IFF is the technology partner for industrial companies intent on making their processes and systems sustainable and resilient by means of digital solutions. Other Fraunhofer institutes apart from Fraunhofer IFF are involved in the project. They all bring scientific expertise and experience from many research projects together with the project partners.

Most of the consortial partners are, however, industrial companies addressing specific challenges and demands. The solutions developed will be implemented in them first. Later, these solutions will be implementable in other industry sectors too.

The following partners are involved in the project:

• Intel Deutschland GmbH
• Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Fraunhofer IFF, Fraunhofer EMFT; Fraunhofer IIS, Fraunhofer IWU, Fraunhofer IZM)
• Infineon Technologies AG
• Elmos Semiconductor SE
• Merck Electronics KGaA
• SAP SE
• Robert Bosch Semiconductor Manufacturing Dresden GmbH
• DAS Environmental Expert GmbH
• Siemens AG
• HQ-Dielectrics GmbH
• OmegaLamdaTec GmbH
• Expo21XX GmbH
• OptWare GmbH
• Systema GmbH
• Hochschule für Technik and Wirtschaft Dresden

Contacts:

Intel Deutschland Press Department
Monika Lischke
monika.lischke@intel.com

Fraunhofer IFF
Tobias Kutzler
Project Manager / Digital Logistics Infrastructures and Systems Group Manager
Phone +49 391 4090-415
tobias.kutzler@iff.fraunhofer.de