With the rise of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the semiconductor industry is undergoing a revolution in how it approaches manufacturing. The SMART-IC project (DATE'24 MPP category: initial stage) works in this direction, by proposing an AI-enabled framework to support the smart monitoring and optimization of the semiconductor manufacturing process. An AI-powered engine examines sensor data recording physical parameters during production (like gas flow, temperature, voltage, etc.) as well as test data, with different goals: (1) the identification of anomalies in the production chain, either offline from collected data-traces or online from a continuous stream of sensed data; (2) the forecasting of new data of the future production; and (3) the automatic generation of synthetic traces, to strengthen the data-based algorithms. All such tasks provide valuable information to an advanced Manufacturing Execution System (MES), which reacts by optimizing the production process and management of the equipment maintenance policies. SMART-IC is a 300k€ academic project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and supported by STMicroelectronics and Technoprobe with industrial expertise and real-world applications. This paper shares the view of SMART-IC on the future of semiconductor manufacturing, the preliminary efforts, and the future results that will be reached by the end of the project, in 2025.

Accurate State of Health (SoH) estimation is indispensable for ensuring battery system safety, reliability, and run-time monitoring. However, as instantaneous runtime measurement of SoH remains impractical when not unfeasible, appropriate models are required for its estimation. Recently, various data-driven models have been proposed, which solve various weaknesses of traditional models. However, the accuracy of data-driven models heavily depends on the quality of the training datasets, which usually contain data that are easy to measure but that are only partially or weakly related to the physical/chemical mechanisms that determine battery aging. In this study, we propose a novel feature engineering approach, which involves augmenting the original dataset with purpose-designed features that better represent the aging phenomena. Our contribution does not consist of a new machine-learning model but rather in the addition of selected features to an existing model. This methodology consistently demonstrates enhanced accuracy across various machine-learning models and battery chemistries, yielding an approximate 25% SoH estimation accuracy improve-ment. Our work bridges a critical gap in battery research, offering a promising strategy to significantly enhance SoH estimation by optimizing feature selection.

Estimating the State of Health (SOH) of batteries is crucial for ensuring the reliable operation of battery systems. Since there is no practical way to instantaneously measure it at run time, a model is required for its estimation. Recently, several data-driven SOH models have been proposed, whose accuracy heavily relies on the quality of the datasets used for their training. Since these datasets are obtained from measurements, they are limited in the variety of the charge/discharge profiles. To address this scarcity issue, we propose generating datasets by simulating a traditional battery model (e.g., a circuit-equivalent one). The primary advantage of this approach is the ability to use a simulatable battery model to evaluate a potentially infinite number of workload profiles for training the data-driven model. Furthermore, this general concept can be applied using any simulatable battery model, providing a fine spectrum of accuracy/complexity tradeoffs. Our results indicate that using simulated data achieves reasonable accuracy in SOH estimation, with a 7.2 % error relative to the simulated model, in exchange for a 27X memory reduction and a$\approx 2000\mathrm{X}$speedup.

Digital twins of production lines do not focus solely on the management of the production process, they can also monitor and optimize other extra-functional aspects such as energy consumption and communications. This paper proposes the extension of digital twin concept in such directions. First, we extend the digital twin with models of energy consumption, that allow the monitoring of production line components throughout production lifetime. Then, we propose a flow to design the communication network starting from information obtained from the digital twin concerning the production, usage and flowing of information through the plant. All these methodologies start from the production line specification, then they enrich it with data collected during operation, and finally information is used to perform design and optimization. Results have been shown on a real Industry 4.0 research facility.