Source: Jiwei Network
Author: Chen Baoliang
[Featured Person]Jiang Dabai, born in 1981, entered the University of Science and Technology of China in 1997, majoring in Safety Engineering, and completed his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees there. He previously served as a senior engineer at United Microelectronics Corporation in Singapore, inventing a new method to improve the exposure focal length accuracy of photolithography machines. Later, he became the chief engineer of advanced process R&D at Global Semiconductor in the United States, responsible for the development of 40nm processes and TSV technology. From 2012 to 2014, he was a special assistant to the chairman of Zhengwei International Group, overseeing the semiconductor business group. In 2014, he became the general manager of Zhongyong Technology Co., Ltd., forming a research and development team for the “Super Mario” intelligent voice interaction system.
In five years of entrepreneurship, Jiang Dabai has visited almost all 12-inch wafer factories established in China. His entrepreneurial experience over the past five years is confirming his initial vision—”China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry will flourish with the development of the global industry, and issues of safety and efficiency in factory operations will gradually become prominent in this trend.“
In 2014, Jiang Dabai established Zhongyong Technology Co., Ltd. in Hefei, officially embarking on his entrepreneurial journey. “From the beginning, we decided to create intelligent factory management systems for wafer and panel factories.” At that time, 33-year-old Jiang Dabai had already worked at UMC and GlobalFoundries, accumulating nine years of industry experience. “In the industry, everyone has always focused more on yield and investment issues in wafer factories, while neglecting the safety, energy-saving, and efficiency issues of factory management systems. There is a significant gap in the integration of factory management systems, emergency response systems, and public safety management in high-end manufacturing, and China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry lacks such enterprises.” Based on industry experience, Zhongyong Technology embarked on this visionary journey.
The Desired Jianghu
Focusing on intelligent factory management, for Jiang Dabai, feels more like a delayed “application of learning.”
During his undergraduate studies in Safety Engineering at the University of Science and Technology of China, Jiang Dabai published an article in a core journal titled “The Relationship Between Fire Disasters and Socioeconomic Factors in China”, concluding through research that “the fire situation in China is more severe in economically developed areas and becomes increasingly severe with economic development.” This conclusion has been widely cited in subsequent fire research articles.
However, after graduation, Jiang Dabai entered the integrated circuit major, where he had “never passed a university exam.” In 2005, he went to Singapore for his first job as a senior engineer at UMC. After investing a lot of time and effort to learn and adapt,the restless Jiang Dabai invented a new method for detecting exposure accuracy in photolithography machines, which received patent authorization in the United States, mainland China, and Taiwan. In 2006, just a year into his job at the age of 25, Jiang Dabai presented this invention at KLA’s YMS summit. During his four and a half years at UMC, Jiang Dabai gained recognition from colleagues, the company, and the industry.
In 2009, Jiang Dabai joined the advanced process R&D department at GlobalFoundries, becoming the youngest chief engineer at GlobalFoundries, responsible for developing the photolithography portion of the 40nm and TSV processes. At this time, Jiang Dabai increasingly felt that “the routine work of sitting in front of a computer from nine to five for twenty years” was not the career he wanted.
In 2011, Jiang Dabai obtained a Schengen visa to prepare for a trip to GlobalFoundries’ German branch. At this moment, Fortune 500 Zhengwei International Group began to lay out its semiconductor business, presenting an opportunity to manage semiconductor projects domestically, and Jiang Dabai chose the latter without hesitation.In August 2013, under Jiang Dabai’s leadership, Zhengwei International Group acquired Samsung’s semiconductor plant No. 5.
In 2013, the “Integrated Circuit Industry Promotion Outline” had not yet been released, and the large fund was still in the planning stage, but groups like Unisplendour and CEC had already initiated a wave of mergers and acquisitions in the semiconductor industry.
“Although at that time China’s semiconductor industry was very weak, many semiconductor companies would definitely emerge and rise, and the entire semiconductor-related industrial chain and supply chain ecosystem would gradually be established,”Jiang Dabai realized that the opportunity to “do something” had arrived.“
In May 2014, Jiang Dabai returned to Hefei to start his business. Although many years had passed since graduation, he still had his own “Jianghu” here.
Ten years ago, in 2004, while studying for his master’s degree, Jiang Dabai founded the University of Science and Technology of China Billiards Association with like-minded classmates and served as the first president; ten years later, Jiang Dabai gathered USTC alumni to start a business, with three of the five founding members of Zhongyong Technology coming from USTC.
The Murphy’s Law of Wafer Factories
At the University of Science and Technology of China, which has the only national key laboratory for fire science, “providing intelligent factory services for wafer and panel factories” is a very easy entrepreneurial point to gain recognition, “this is a very large market, and China’s shortcomings in disaster prevention in high-end manufacturing are very obvious.“
Although China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry is just beginning, accidents and disasters are gradually becoming apparent. In September 2013, a series of explosions and fires occurred at Hynix in Wuxi, leading to a global memory shortage and a 42% price surge.
The fire not only affected the semiconductor industry but also severely impacted China’s insurance industry. The estimated loss from this fire insurance was about $900 million, making it the largest single accident loss in China’s insurance history and the second-largest single accident property insurance claim in world insurance history, following the “911” incident. This single case led to overall losses in the national industry property insurance. Subsequently,the insurance industry reassessed the “high-risk, high-coverage, high-vulnerability” semiconductor manufacturing industry, believing that there is a high possibility of losses exceeding those of Hynix in the future.“
According to statistics from Taiwan from 1994 to 2004, wafer factories in Taiwan experienced about four fires each year, with an average loss of $25 million per incident. Now, with the improvement of manufacturing processes, the loss amounts have far exceeded previous figures.
In addition to fires, power outages can also cause losses of millions, and gas leaks pose serious health risks to employees. In November 2018, Samsung officially issued an apology to employees, stating that over a thousand employees at Samsung’s semiconductor and panel factories were affected by health issues due to gas leaks, with 320 diagnosed with cancer and 118 deceased, and affected employees had been appealing for eleven years.
Although major wafer factories continuously improve and remedy their systems, in recent years, Samsung, Hynix, TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and World Advanced have still experienced frequent production accidents such as power outages, leaks, fires, and pollution, with increasing frequency.Fires, leaks, and power outages are like Murphy’s Law for wafer factories; disasters that can happen will happen.“
Inheritance of Wafer Factories
“All advanced concepts in manufacturing are almost first realized in wafer factories,” Jiang Dabai told reporters. “Twenty years ago, wafer factories began adopting IoT technology; today, many factories’ automation levels still do not match those of wafer factories twenty years ago; the industry-promoted Industry 4.0 has actually been realized in wafer factories long ago.”All advanced manufacturing concepts aim to minimize human operation links in complex processes, enhancing safety and efficiency.
However, within the entire wafer factory, systems for water supply, heating, gas pipelines, electricity, and air conditioning have been relatively neglected, becoming the weak point of wafer factories.
“Wafer factories actually have strict disaster prevention plans and detailed SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), but when disasters occur, hundreds of SOPs are difficult to respond to manually,” Jiang Dabai explained. “Therefore, we have begun to integrate SOPs into the FMCS (Factory Management Control System), gradually achieving intelligent factory management, which has been relatively mature in Taiwan’s wafer factories and is gradually becoming popular in the industry.”
Zhongyong Technology’s innovation in intelligent factory management lies in the introduction of a new “Grid Risk Tree“. Jiang Dabai stated: “Previously, NASA proposed this risk assessment method for risk management in space shuttles and rockets. By collecting and analyzing data from various control points, the risk coefficient of each grid area is presented and updated in real-time on a visual screen.“
The first step in establishing the Grid Risk Tree is to collect data from the wafer factory’s water, electricity, gas, and chemical systems. To this end,Zhongyong Technology developed the “LINKA IoT Gateway,” which is compatible with almost all protocols; subsequently, a founding team of alumni from Taiwan and USTC spent over a year developing AI algorithms for the factory management system.
Jiang Dabai explained to reporters: “Previously, the factory management control room required more than a dozen people to monitor several computers; now, only one person can manage the entire factory and can control cameras for detailed inspections via voice; a wafer factory can be divided into 100,000 grids, assessing area risk coefficients based on various parameters such as combustible materials, stored gases, temperature, foreign personnel, construction details, etc., and issuing warnings through different colors. Updates occur every 5-10 minutes, allowing risks to be mitigated at the cradle.”
Currently, Hefei Jinghe, the first 12-inch wafer factory in Anhui Province, has adopted this risk control system, with Zhongyong Technology providing full system integration, including CCTV, access control, alarms, parking management, and cleanroom management, along with voice control features. In addition to Jinghe, Zhongyong Technology is also designing overall risk control solutions for five other high-end manufacturing enterprises. By 2018, Zhongyong Technology, which had been established for four years, had achieved an annual revenue of 30 million yuan.
“Wafer factories are becoming increasingly complex, with hundreds of thousands of control points as building systems. However, many domestic companies and local governments still treat wafer factories as ordinary factories, believing that basic infrastructure is sufficient, which poses significant challenges to the development of wafer factories. Developing wafer factories requires attention and the establishment of inheritance.”After five years of entrepreneurship, Jiang Dabai has found his Jianghu in the field of wafer factory risk control and is beginning to establish a legacy.
Cheers to the outstanding students of the University of Science and Technology of China!
Recommended Reading
▶The Secretary and President of the University of Science and Technology of China, along with the director of the national laboratory, are personally involved; this year’s Science and Technology Activity Week is even more exciting!
▶Robots, 3D printing, mind-controlled spiders… the University of Science and Technology of China brings “science” to the countryside, “lighting up” the technological dreams of children in the mountains.
▶Excellent! Holding 23 papers, elected as a “Microsoft Scholar”; see how he transitioned from intern to researcher.
▶Young Xiaodi’s fantastic journey at Microsoft Research Asia.
▶Impressive! After five years of dedicated innovation, the first experimental verification of the three-dimensional quantum Hall effect.
▶The University of Science and Technology of China featured on CCTV’s “News Broadcast” headline! Fundamental research and original innovation! China’s economy is unafraid of challenges!
▶Continuing to advance, the University of Science and Technology of China has launched a “Year of Enhancing First-Class Undergraduate Education Quality”.
▶Staying true to the original intention and remembering the mission | A pictorial account of the past three years at the University of Science and Technology of China.
