October 18th, 2022
Devtank are proud to be one of the four partners within project INSPIRE, a £2.4 million world leading semiconductor plant project led by PragmatIC. The aim of this project is to develop and deploy new digital technologies within PragmatIC’s FlexLogIC semiconductor fabrication facilities. This will drive improved resource efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing operations.
The funding, provided by the Made Smarter Innovation: Smart Sustainable Factory Challenge at UK Research and Innovation, will focus on innovation that will help accelerate the decarbonisation of semiconductor manufacturing. This will be done by optimising the consumption, quality and recovery of resources across wafer processing, tools, and facilities.
Devtank’s partnership within the project presents a significant opportunity to bolster and improve our IoT solution offerings using innovate open source technology to build an interoperable smart factory blueprint. This project is a major step forward for the company and will help us expand our team and product range.
Devtank’s Position Within INSPIRE
In this project, Devtank are leading the way on sensorisation, providing PragmatIC with the tools to monitor; Water, Gases, Chemicals, Energy, and Environmental parameters. Real time monitoring of key factors is paramount to creating and maintaining a high quality smart factory; eliminating waste, high energy costs and working towards the decarbonisation of the innovative semiconductor manufacturing process. Analysis of data will aid PragmatIC with keeping on top of resource efficiency and environmental standards through monitoring parameters such as energy consumption, sound levels, air quality and temperature/humidity. As a result, Devtank play a crucial role in making sure that INSPIRE meets the environmental and efficiency objectives.
At Devtank, we specialise in test and measurement solutions, including sensorisation and automation for forward thinking businesses. We now have a product portfolio of environmental sensors, production test and measurement solutions including test fixtures. Within the last two years, we have been working hard on our new brand, OpenSmartMonitor, using this product to help businesses monitor their energy usage, waste and environmental factors. This has already proven a success across the companies who have our products installed. Customers finding water leaks and boilers coming on in the night, to machines working inefficiently now have a better understanding of why their energy bills are high and how to lower these costs and improve their resource efficiency.
Sustainable Semiconductor Factories
Project INSPIRE will join new manufacturing technologies with existing systems including:
- – Sensors capturing resource usage and quality – water, chemicals, gases and energy
- – Development of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, aggregating operational, tools and facilities data to drive optimisation
- – Active water and energy management, minimising consumption and maximising recovery
- – Ensuring operational performance, including measures of capacity, cycle time, equipment performance, process variation and yield improvement
