STMicroelectronics is a leading global microprocessor manufacturer. Its products power the technology people use every day, and with the global market expected to reach US$110B by 2026, end-user demand has never been stronger. Having tried manual contact tracing procedures every production shutdown costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is business were keeping people healthy, makes good business sense. RightCrowd was selected to deliver its class-leading digital contact tracing solution to help keep its operations running.

STMicroelectronics was formed in 1987 by the merger of two world-renown semiconductor companies, and in 1994 it completed its IPO on the Paris and New York stock exchanges. Its operations in Malaysia have existed since 1974 and has around 4,000 employees with an extensive assembly operation.

STMicroelectronics creates the connections that animate the products people use at any given moment. Their technology is found everywhere that microelectronics make a contribution to people’s lives. Chips from ST are embedded in the most advanced innovations and are an essential part of products as diverse as cars, factories and datacentres, washing machines and hard disks, and smartphones and toothbrushes.

The global Microprocessor market is expected to reach US$110B by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 4.16% owing to the rapid technological advancements and growing demands from the semiconductors market.

The increasing digitalization in numerous sectors, rising number of smartphones and evolving business models are creating numerous growth opportunities for the Global Microprocessor Market. The end-users are progressively receiving more advanced microprocessors with every new product release, which is driven by innovation and highly competitive end user applications.

Glenn Folkes, Regional Account Director with RightCrowd noted that ‘With such strong demand for ST products, management recognised that Covid-19 represented a major operational risk and established a Covid Management Team which set about understanding the risks and establishing a set controls. One of those was digital contact tracing.

William Calamba, Operations Director at STMicroelectronics said ‘global demand has highlighted how critical our people are in meeting our production aspirations. It is very difficult if we lose whole teams in our highly specialised planning, assembly and logistics areas. This technology will help us rapidly identify exposed people and implement our Covid Management Procedures. If we can keep people safe, then we can keep our operations running’.

The company had attempted manual contact tracing early in the pandemic and found that in a large-scale manufacturing environment there were a large number of recall errors, and manual tracing across changing staff rosters lead to significant delays in managing outbreaks.

William said ‘when our people are infected by Covid, the cost of shutting production line can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per day. If we keep our people healthy, our business runs better’.

The company went through a rigorous technical and operational evaluation of a number of competing solutions. They chose RightCrowd because of its class-leading contact tracing capability. It was essential the accurate Exposure Reporting be delivered quickly to implement its Covid Management Plan.

William noted ‘the contact tracing application was beyond anything else that we had seen in terms of speed when we compared it to our previous manual processes. The application could convert days of effort into minutes, this meant we could respond more quickly and keep our people healthy and operations running’.

The RightCrowd Badgeholder collected close contact automatically and fed it to a secure database whenever people entered lunch areas or corporate offices. The Company chose to ensure privacy of workers was protected and that personal data could not be exposed. Digital contact tracing became an essential component of the company’s hierarchy of controls.

The major impact is that when a Covid case is identified, exposed people are notified rapidly and their health can be looked after. Previously the Company would use manual contact tracing procedures, which were slow and error prone in a large industrial environment.

Mr William noted that ‘ST enables safer, smarter and greener ways of living and we were looking for a better way to manage our Covid Risks. Keeping our people healthy and our operations running with rapid contact tracing makes good business sense’.

This is why STMicroelectronics chose RightCrowd: