Supply Chain Explorer Enables Real-Time Analysis of Semiconductor Supply Impact Saving Thousands of Research Hours

THE CHALLENGE

On June 9th, 2021, at about noon local time, local Chinese government officials reported a fire and subsequent explosion occurred at a silicone packaging workshop in China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. The facility was part of a Hoshine Silicon manufacturing plant in the Shihezi Economic and Technological Development Zone.

Hoshine Silicon Industry Co Ltd. is a producer of many different lines of metal, powder, and organic silicone and polysilicon products, and has been a part of significant market consolidation among polysilicon manufacturers in China and was a critical supplier to many of the top semiconductor and solar panel companies globally. The publicly-traded company was founded in 2005 and has 8,893 employees. The explosion was widely reported but conjecture that the disruption of polysilicon in the semiconductor sector could be significant, which was already subject to substantial supply shortages, was a serious concern.

THE SOLUTION

On the morning of the explosion (EDT), Exiger assessed the June 9 explosion at the Hoshine Silicon facility in Xinjiang, China and proactively alerted a Customer that, after conducting an extensive review of the supply chain, the Hoshine disaster was downgraded to a low risk event for the U.S. supply chain in the short term. They did not identify any material connections to Customer suppliers and the Top U.S. Hoshine importers had robust supply chains with capacity to replace lost Hoshine supply capacity.

THE IMPACT

With Exiger’s alert, the Customer was able to not only flag the industrial disaster but ensure our businesses understood the context for the Customer.  In traditional systems, the alert would have been related to the explosion and the Customer would have to investigate the issue in-depth.  The additional real-time analysis provided by Exiger allowed the Customer to contextualize the crisis and continue operations as normal.