Due to heavy rain caused by Typhoon Aere in Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture, lightning hit a power line feeding into Renesas Group’s Kawashiri Factory on July 5 at 5:43 a.m. JST. This resulted in an instantaneous voltage drop, temporarily halting production equipment at the factory.
Renesas has been implementing contingency measures for instantaneous voltage drops, such as installing Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). The voltage drop this time lasted longer than any incident that occurred in the past ten years and any estimation that Renesas had made, leading to a temporary suspension of approximately 90% of the production equipment. On the other hand, the clean room has maintained its function even after the instantaneous voltage drop.
Restarting of production equipment is in progress, and some of the production process has resumed operation on July 6 JST. We expect to reach full production capacity (wafer input base) equivalent to before the instantaneous voltage drop on July 11 JST.
Some damage is expected to be made to the work-in-process from the instantaneous voltage drop. We are moving forward to recover a maximum of approximately 2 weeks’ worth of production, which the amount of ruined work-in-process and losses due to halted production account for.