The Invisible Billion-Dollar Crisis That's Sabotaging Chip Factories

Kenneth Smith, VP of Growth Markets at Seek Corporation, explains how his company helps semiconductor manufacturers leverage their industrial data for analytics and AI applications. Seek started as a solution to get engineers out of Excel spreadsheets and into scalable, cloud-based analytics tools designed specifically for time-series industrial data. The company connects natively to existing historians and data systems in manufacturing facilities, enabling rapid deployment without requiring large IT infrastructure projects.

Seek's breakthrough in semiconductors came through a partnership with Intel, where they're deployed across all Intel fabs starting with facilities operations - managing pumps, chillers, HVAC systems, and other mission-critical equipment. Smith emphasizes that their approach focuses on enabling domain experts (process engineers, reliability engineers) to perform their own analytics rather than relying solely on centralized data science teams. The platform includes workbench applications for analysis, monitoring capabilities for real-time anomaly detection, and AI features that leverage contextual data.

A key differentiator is Seek's ability to reduce 'the cost of curiosity' - engineers can explore hypotheses without expensive data extraction processes or IT bottlenecks. Smith describes cases where customers achieve seven-figure returns within 90 days of deployment. The company also enables secure data sharing between manufacturers and their equipment OEMs, creating collaborative problem-solving environments. Smith advocates for semiconductor companies to start with facility-side applications as a lower-risk entry point before expanding into clean room operations, emphasizing that modern AI capabilities require cloud-based, scalable platforms to realize their full potential.