Save your energy

By reducing energy usage, some ISMI member companies have seen millions of dollars in savings drop right to the bottom line, explained ISMI’s Phil Naughton during his presentation at this year’s Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference in Boston. He noted that a typical wafer fab’s tools use 40 to 50%+ of the factory’s overall energy, with support and facility systems gobbling up most of the rest. Out of that fab-tool energy nut, some 60% is consumed by such subsystems and components as vacuum pumps, chillers, and point-of-use abatement tools.

The analysis tool developed by Naughton and his colleagues captures the total value of direct energy (power, energy conversion) and indirect energy (that used to produce bulk gas, water, vacuum, and other utilities) of a piece of equipment and its impact on the factory. 

Through a series of comparisons and calculations incorporating total equivalent energy and energy conversion factors, a company can zero in on which systems and subsystems scarf up the most energy and then work to reduce that energy usage.

Tool suppliers can also use this information to make their equipment more energy efficient.

In an era of rising utility and energy costs, fab managers won’t look askance at approaches like the ISMI analysis tool. A few more common-sense implements in the toolkit give them the means to push down costs and push up profitability, while pushing toward a more sustainable and greener semiconductor-manufacturing model.