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Dynamic Marketplace

Time to Market

 With products being constantly introduced, profits and earnings are intimately tied to how quickly a product can be brought to market. Often a 3 to 4 month delay can result in a significant erosion of prices as well as total profits.

Increasing Yields and Eroding Prices

 Unlike other industries, the manufacturing process is highly variable. Typically, yields change improve significantly over time, while prices decline.

Extended Supply Chain

 Manufacturing steps are typically spread out over different countries. Production needs to be coordinated between the Fabs and downstream facilities. This is especially challenging because the downstream processes are often sub-contracted.




Unique Opportunities in Semiconductors (some examples)

Quantitative Framework for Evaluating Sales Opportunities.

Opportunities are often evaluated using rough estimates of profitability and costs, without taking into account current constraints and conditions. This becomes especially important in an environmnet of declining prices and increasing yields.

Reconciling Bookings with Shipments

Many companies do not adequately reconcile bookings with capacity and shipments. A direct result is that the "starts" are not well synchronized with desired shipments and large amounts of in-process inventory are built up. More important, capacity is not utilized effectively to meet shipments.

Integrating Production Schedules at Distributed Facilities

Although manufacturing facilities are typically spread out at different locations, the different schedules can in fact be synchronized so that the entire supply chain functions as a single virtual factory. However, this is often not done and planning time lags result in mismatched production schedules.