Semantically Connected Semiconductor Supply Chains

Project Information

SC3

Grant agreement ID: 101007312

DOI

10.3030/101007312

Project closed

EC signature date 24 September 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 30 November 2023

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 1 999 835,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 835,00

Coordinated by

INFINEON TECHNOLOGIES AG
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SC3 (Semantically Connected Semiconductor Supply Chains)

Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2023-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The semiconductor industry is characterised by complex supply chain structures. A common language and structure has to be developed and enrolled to enable smooth collaboration among different supply chain participants in this B2B (business to business) environment. SC³ relies on enabling a collaboration of industrial as well as academic stakeholders to ensure interoperability among semiconductor companies, and further industrial domains. SC³ implements an industrial reference platform as a de-facto standard (frequently used). This framework acts as a key enabler for realising an agile development - validation - refinement loop of a top-level ontology i.e. Digital Reference (DR). DR comprises a combination of different ontologies of semiconductor supply chains and supply chains containing semiconductors. To that end, the framework will support ontology governance e.g. development, archiving and indexing as well as the validation of high quality and interlinked ontologies and taxonomies. SC³ will incrementally add domain knowledge to the DR; the extended version of DR covers semiconductor domain vocabulary and related sub domains. The platform allows the involvement of all stakeholder groups in a customised fashion and proposes iterative engaging approaches for each community. The DR allows modularly including, developing and extending domain knowledge to provide a connected supply network structure.

The project follows a deliberate piloting methodology in order to deliver the demonstrators needed as proof-of-concept and for evaluation of project’s measurable objectives. SC³ activities have a strong focus on sustainability and uptake of the project results. This includes on the one hand to keep the established community alive and on the other hand that the semiconductor data documentation, (i.e. the Generic Semiconductor Data Model) will be further developed and maintained even after the project duration.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The requirements of stakeholders were collected and categorized. In view of designing and implementing new ontologies, main activities were directed towards extending the top-level model/ontology with new ontologies from semiconductor and others domains. These extensions required also alignment and integration activities. Prior to the design of the new ontologies, the existing literature on ontologies for semiconductor manufacturing and more general supply chains was reviewed. Moreover, several interviews with experts in semiconductor supply chains from different companies were conducted.

The SC³ Ontology framework platform provides functionalities related to ontology governance, like the ability to host ontologies and to manage them for further processing and visualizations. Essentially, it provides a customizable tool that realizes a hybrid ontology visualization mode. Furthermore, we have implemented a set of interlinked required platform functionalities. These are an upload mechanism that allows the integration of existing ontologies into the portal. The upload is coupled to a first authorization and authentication infrastructure, that grants only privileged roles access to the uploading functionality.

The key achievements towards evaluation of the industrial platform and the ontology ecosystem are: The Digital Reference has been improved, both its structure and linguistic layer; the Digital Reference has been extended; CO2 ontology implementation can be a possible future link to the automotive industry; the collaborative update process supported by blockchain storage works well and first demonstrators have been proposed. To assure better consistency and readability of the Digital Reference and other ontologies we created Ontology Naming Conventions Best Practices. This document contains basic linguistic rules for ontology creating. Moreover, we worked on the topic of time modelling in ontologies. Also, we discussed versioning tools for the Digital Reference and reviewed open source platform options for the future publishing of ontologies. We started updating Digital Reference weekly, updates are communicated to all consortium members via e-mail and can be discussed during regular team meetings.

In the final reporting period, the Digital Reference ecosystem has become more mature, and its development vision has been improved. First research has been done and we will further work towards the layered and modular architecture in the follow-up project (SC4EU). The collaborative ontology update process has already been adjusted for the new upcoming structure. Moreover, Digital Reference has grown significantly, and several use cases have been proposed. Following highlights were achieved and demonstrated at the final review: ontology curation platform, in-depth evaluation of the developed ontologies, integration of all the different ontologies into the Digital Reference platform, integration of the ontologies into the software engineering framework.

We have presented our SC3 solutions and its implementation in various publications, workshops, webinars, and project external meetings. Extensive video material showing the achievements is available at the project website.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

SC³ built a suitable infrastructure and hosting mechanisms to access the Digital Reference in an open yet suitably controlled and secured manner. During the SC³, regular meetings of stakeholders with a view to management were established. The meeting ensured that the latest updates of the results are shown to the management and feedback can be collected to enrol version updates. One major impact of the SC³ is to ensure that other relevant EU funded projects can access the platform. SC³ delivered standardised data documentation ensuring interoperability between industries. We made sure, that the platform contains the semiconductor domain as a core industrial domain. Furthermore, the platform is extended to other domains containing semiconductors as well, to cover the entire supply chain. The Digital Reference will be widely spread to relevant communities. One major goal of the SC³ was to make the platform a self-sustaining one. Therefore, a value data sharing model was implemented, which makes the platform self-sustaining in the end. SC³ supported standardisation at the end of the project. Therefore, SC³ contributed to two main standards, in particular IEC 61508 and IEC 61511. IEC 61508 is used as the basic functional safety standard and IEC61511 is used as the Industrial Automation and Control Security Standard. Through SC³, the Digital Reference platform as an open self-evolving decentral organized standard was developed. Therefore, domain knowledge was incrementally added to the Digital Reference. SC³ beyond cooperating with relevant industry stakeholders and standardisation bodies, closely monitored and interacted with EU initiatives. SC³ delivered not only ontologies and taxonomies documentation for all by the call targeted domains. It maintained backwards compatibility where necessary, but it also developed a comprehensive framework for the long-term relevance of the implementation. SC³ delivered standardised data documentation ensuring interoperability between industries. Capitalizing on the long-standing partners domain experience, SC³ will catalogue all existing ontologies along with their pros and cons. The SC³’s framework incorporates all useful information evolving the necessary part while it creates a consistent migration path.

SC3 project concept to foster cooperation with different stakeholders

SC3 roadmap to achieve project results