Bosch opens $1.2 billion chip plant in Germany
Germany technology and parts supplier Robert Bosch opened a €1 billion ($1.2 billion) chip factory in Dresden, Germany on Monday, the single largest investment in the company’s history. The plant, which will mainly supply automotive customers, is a major signal that connected and electric vehicles are here to stay.
“Regardless of which powertrain we talk about … always we
need a semiconductor and sensor,” Bosch’s executive vice president of
automotive electronics Jens Fabrowsky told TechCrunch.
The plant will handle front-of-the-line processing, or wafer
fabrication, in the semiconductor manufacturing process. The 300-millimeter
wafers will be sent to partners, typically in Asia, to do packaging and
assembly of the semiconductors.
300 millimeters is a “new field of technology,” Fabrowsky
explained. As opposed to the 150- or 200-millimeter wafers that are produced at
Bosch’s nearby factory in Reutlingen, Germany, the larger wafer size offers
greater economies of scale because you can produce more individual chips per wafer.
The 77,500-square-foot plant will run on what Bosch calls
“AIoT,” a term that combines artificial intelligence and Internet of Things to
denote a fully connected and data-driven system that’s unique to the facility.
Bosch will not only have real-time data on the approximately 100 machines, but
also on the power, water and other aspects of the facility — up to 500 pages of
data per second, Fabrowsky said. The AI-driven algorithm should detect an
anomaly from any of the connected sensors immediately.
Despite its high levels of automation, the plant will employ
around 700 people once it is fully operational.
It is unclear whether the plant will help resolve the
ongoing global semiconductor shortage, which has forced automakers like General
Motors and Ford to slash production volumes and temporarily shutter
manufacturing facilities.
“At the point when we decided [to build the plant] it was
purely driven by technology,” Fabrowsky said. “It was clear we needed to go
into 300 [millimeters], and we needed to invest in some more capacity.”
The facility will begin production in July with chips for
power tools before beginning production on automotive chips in September. It
generally takes over 20 weeks to make a semiconductor chip, Fabrowsky said,
including 600 individual steps in the wafer facility alone.
The company will also be investing €50 million ($61 million)
to extend the clean room facilities at its Reutlingen plant, Bosch board member
Harald Kroeger said at a media briefing Monday.
Bosch has applied to Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic
Affairs and Energy under a microelectronics investment program to subsidize
expenditures for the plant of up to €200 million ($244 million).
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