SIGMA-ALDRICH’S chemical plant in Sheboygan, Wis., has come a long way since its days as the site of a failed experiment by the makers of Schlitz beer. Today, it is a thriving site where a $9 million clean room just opened to serve the electronics industry. Joseph Schlitz Brewing built the plant some 25 years ago to produce diethyl pyro-carbonate, a sanitization chemical expected to revolutionize the beer-making process. But according to Frank D. Wicks, president of SAFC, Sigma-Aldrich’s fine chemicals division, Schlitz scientists discovered that using the chemical created potentially carcinogenic nitrosamines. The brewer abandoned the program and sold the plant to what was then Sigma Chemical. Today, the site is home to some 360 Sigma-Aldrich employees who run several chemical plants on behalf of various company businesses. More and more, these employees are serving Wicks’s SAFC Hitech electronic materials business. Although Sigma-Aldrich has long supplied electronics manufacturers with high-purity chemi...