Interview with Dallal Slimani, VP Semiconductor Segment, Schneider Electric
We sat down with Dallal Slimani to get her years of perspective on the how semiconductor companies can tackle sustainability and the recipes for success for a greener future for the industry.
Q: Sustainability is a big deal for the semiconductor industry. What is their starting point to meet their long-term sustainability goals?
Dallal SLIMANI: Taking climate action—and making the most of it for your organization—requires commitment, innovation, and an ability to translate ambition into meaningful action.
Considering that over 30% of companies missed scope 1 and 2 goals they set for 2020, we know that crossing the bridge from goals to results can be challenging. This emphasizes the need for diversified professional support and expertise in the different fields to begin with.
My recommendation is to start by engaging a proficient company for sustainability consultancy that has a proven track record in delivering its own sustainability commitments. You want to engage an expert that practices what they preach and can prove it.
Once you have a clear picture of your starting point, you would want to make carbon reduction part of the investment decision-making process to make sure your dollars have a meaningful impact on your sustainability ambitions. You would also like to look at your energy mix, introducing more renewables. Another good practice is to have sustainability be a top criterion for supplier selection, as well as to engage your existing supply base to take commitments and actions towards sustainability.
Q: What else is pivotal to enabling decarbonization of the semiconductor industry in the next 5 years?
Dallal SLIMANI: I believe that the fastest and most efficient way toward decarbonization is through electrification and digitization. At my company, we support our customers with end-to-end digital solutions to monitor their energy consumption and provide the relevant insights to drive energy efficiency actions, which are an important aspect of sustainability. Using digital twins powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence to run advanced analytics, we enable our customers to identify the right levers to reduce energy consumption. Digital tools, such as 6D BIM (building information modeling), help our customers understand how they can integrate sustainability into their business model, especially focusing on energy and resource consumption.
On the green electrical equipment side, we also bring unique innovations to the market with SF6-free MV switchgear that can take a big bite out of the carbon footprint. While on the supply side, we help semiconductor companies bring environmental improvements to their operations by integrating on-site renewables like wind and solar. Our products are designed and built to adhere to our Green Premium program, which was created to provide our customers with healthier, more resource efficient products and to provide transparency about our products’ environmental and regulatory information.
Q: What are the biggest barriers to green transition in the semiconductor industry and how do you recommend they be tackled?
Dallal SLIMANI: Complex organizational structures can slow down the decision-making process and make it difficult to get buy-in. For example, research by McKinsey and Harvard Business School recently showed that business units that fully adopted an agile model before the COVID crisis outperformed units that had not. This extends the planning process, and some companies get stuck in planning, unable to implement projects and produce results at the pace they need to.
Overcoming this requires a holistic approach that engages decision-makers at all levels of the organization, and across businesses and geographies, to establish buy-in and accountability for internal targets. Centralized governance in the C-suite and an enterprise strategy help keep the sustainability program aligned with business objectives, resources, and capabilities and help ensure the achievement of long-range goals. Professional advice ensures buy-in by stakeholders because advisors can help create a strategy that aligns organizational goals with those of stakeholders.
Q: What will be the state of the semiconductor industry’s sustainability 10 years from now?
Dallal SLIMANI: The main semiconductor industry sustainability landscape is already driving the significant adoption of renewable energy uptake, and significantly improving resource utilization efficiency and re-use (energy and water) throughout its overall production cycle. We can see this already from major semiconductor company’s ESG reporting, such as Intel.
Another important milestone, zero-waste fab plants, are already being planned by major semiconductor players today, such as TSMC.
Establishing a robust circular economy in the semiconductor supply chain would be another major contributor toward the sustainability progress of semiconductor companies – with major companies already exhibiting substantial achievements toward re-use and re-generation.
Q: Schneider Electric is doing a lot of interesting work in sustainability across industries, including semiconductor. Any top experiences you can share?
Dallal SLIMANI: We were being challenged by major semiconductor customers to help them drastically reduce their energy consumption by this decade. Based on our experience working with our customers and closely collaborating, we understood their challenges and pain points. With this knowledge, we developed an enterprise advanced energy management platform to provide data collection that predictive analytics using AI/machine learning (ML) can turn into actionable insights.
Creating massive energy saving across multiple sites is a big challenge for an energy-intensive industry in the midst of tremendous expansion. With the environmental commitment from customers’ executive teams, we leverage Schneider Electric latest technologies and know-how to provide digitization of their fabs for decarbonization.
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