How You Can Lower Costs and Optimize Operations like Hemlock Semiconductor
Blog: The Tibco Blog
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Hemlock Semiconductor Operations (HSC) is the largest manufacturer of polysilicon in the U.S. and produces nearly one third of the world’s supply. Its polysilicon is manufactured for semiconductors, which are used in electronics, phones, appliances, solar cells, cars, and much more—and is currently in high demand and short supply.
HSC is often in the news for its outstanding manufacturing; its polysilicon was voted the Michigan Manufacturers Association’s 2020 Coolest Thing Made in Michigan, and IndustryWeek recently wrote about Hemlock’s commitment to lowering its carbon footprint. In addition, Hemlock’s innovative solutions won the 2019 TIBCO Trailblazer Impact Award for accelerating process optimization and reducing record processing by 1000x.
How does this leading manufacturer find so much success? Through data-driven initiatives fueled by the TIBCO® Connected Intelligence platform.
Highlighted use cases for factory optimization
- Process alerting
Hemlock uses anomaly detection to lower its overall cost structure and ensure long-term price competitiveness. Using real-time process monitoring, the manufacturer can maximize its output, quality, and control over the polysilicon production process, which requires purity levels of 99.999999999 percent to meet most customer expectations.
Now, when an anomaly is detected, HSC can see which variables caused the problem and fix the issue before it results in serious and costly setbacks.
- Increased sustainability
TIBCO Spotfire®visualizations have allowed the company to optimize its energy goals, detailed in HSC’s 2020 Sustainability Report. The company reports a savings of around $300,000 a month in energy consumption thanks to TIBCO’s analytics-driven platform.
“We found TIBCO’s Spotfire software to be one of the most powerful tools for our program to increase energy efficiency. We’re impressed with the results and the use of data science that helped us get there,” said Keith Carey, CIO at HSC.
“We found TIBCO’s Spotfire software to be one of the most powerful tools for our program to increase energy efficiency. We’re impressed with the results and the use of data science that helped us get there,” said Keith Carey, CIO at HSC.
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- 360-degree site operations analysis
With 360-degree views of operations, Hemlock can visualize its entire 200-acre site instantly. This visualization is overlaid with key performance indicators that show how each area is performing compared to benchmarks. Now, important decision-makers can quickly see the status of operations across the entire company at a glance.
These three use cases aren’t the only exciting features of Hemlock’s comprehensive Connected Intelligence solution. Hemlock utilizes more capabilities in other areas like testing plan validation, cost of quality, and portfolio management—which you can read about in this new technical case study.
Insights for all industries
The success HSC achieved with TIBCO translates beyond manufacturing into many industries such as retail, banking, and insurance. The key to your data success lies in a comprehensive Connected Intelligence solution set that all users want to use and can understand.
According to Phillip Rausch, Solar Commercial Manager at HSC, “The key is that it’s not a tool people are being told to use; it’s the other way around. People have gotten so many benefits out of big data analytical capabilities—they’re finding more opportunities we never thought were possible or had even considered.”
For more about enterprise-wide transformation that you can implement today, read about Hemlock’s innovation story here.
The post How You Can Lower Costs and Optimize Operations like Hemlock Semiconductor first appeared on The TIBCO Blog.
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