August 31, 2026

Grantek will be presenting at SEMICON West on October 15, 2026 in San Francisco, CA. Grantek’s Sr. Systems Engineer, Weida Li, will join Ross Mahler of Moxa at 10:20amPT on October 15th to present: “Upgrading Legacy Fabs with Modern Automation and Integration Through Ignition”.

Inductive Automation is a supplier of Ignition, a web-based industrial automation software. Grantek holds the rare Premier Integrator and Enterprise Integrator distinctions with Inductive Automation due to our strong thought leadership and repeatable methodology for delivering successful projects built on the Ignition platform. Our team includes dozens of engineers across North America who are trained and certified in Ignition.

Click Here to Schedule a Meeting with Grantek at SEMICON West

The path to autonomous semiconductor fab operations is constrained less by model-layer software than by the integration state of the equipment underneath. Class tools in production fabs commonly have operating lifetimes exceeding thirty years, while the Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), operator interfaces, fieldbuses, and data systems running them age out on much shorter cycles and were procured independently across decades. The result is an installed base of high-value tools that cannot share state, present a unified operator view, or feed the structured data layer that artificial intelligence (AI) and digital twin workloads require. Closing that gap is a precondition for fab-scale autonomy. As AI takes on more automated decisions, the cybersecurity posture of the underlying Industrial Control System (ICS) network becomes a parallel precondition.

SEMI E-187, built on IEC 62443, is the cybersecurity framework for modernizing ICS and edge compute infrastructure; aligning to E-187 at design time rather than retrofitting later is the practical path to a defensible autonomous fab.

This work presents a four-year control and data architecture modernization program executed at a major U.S. semiconductor capital equipment Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), addressing a critical class tool generation across multiple released code-set revisions. The triggering event was a 2023 lifecycle gate: End-Of-Life of the Remote Input/Output (I/O) family and paired Central Processing Unit (CPU) running across a significant portion of the OEM’s installed base. The affected systems were migrated onto the new PLC and I/O platform, preserving form, fit, and function at the panel level through push-in spring terminals and matched I/O density. Six software configurations across three released code-set generations were standardized in parallel, each preserving the OEM’s dual-mode architecture: Factory-Mode for OEM-side debug, simulation, and overridable interlocks; safety-validated Field-Mode for production fab deployment.

A holistic Ignition-based ICS ecosystem provides the connectivity backbone for autonomous operations. Communications across the installed base were consolidated under one PLC: Modbus over serial for temperature and barometric pressure subsystems, TCP/IP for the customer’s LabView test fixtures and proprietary Linux operator interface, and Profibus at legacy fieldbus segments. Moxa managed networking provides the deterministic transport layer and zone-and-conduit segmentation that SEMI E-187 calls for. Moxa NPort serial-to-Ethernet gateways extend Ignition’s reach into safety and facility subsystems on each tool, including Emergency Off (EMO) circuits, smoke and leak detection, vacuum and chiller temperature monitoring, and gas analyzers. Converting these RS-232/RS-485 signals into structured data delivers centralized alarms, event history, equipment status, and traceability supporting SEMI S2 safety compliance documentation. Template-driven engineering reduced follow-on code-set scope by ~57%, and the pattern has extended across additional tool families. The next phase migrates the operator interface onto Ignition Perspective via Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA), with a centralized Ignition Gateway and tag historian capturing state, alarm, and run data, extensible to SEMI Equipment Communications Standard / Generic Equipment Model (SECS/GEM) for fab-side interoperability.

This presentation details the integration architecture, standardization patterns, and implementation results, with focus on what becomes addressable in legacy semiconductor equipment once integration is complete.

What: SEMICON West
When: October 15, 2026
Where: Moscone Center – 747 Howard St., San Francisco, CA 94103