UNDERSTANDING DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY AND CHIP LIFECYCLE FOR SUCCESSFUL SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING

UNDERSTANDING DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY AND CHIP LIFECYCLE FOR SUCCESSFUL SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING

All semiconductor enterprises, including fabs, fabless, IDMs, foundries, OSATs, or subcontractors, can leverage the latest end-to-end product lifecycle management software solutions to improve time-to-market (TTM).

Can this be achieved by reducing waste and significantly lowering costs? A new independent study shows that indeed it can.

The New Era of Chip Development Drives Growth

There are certainly countless opportunities in today’s semiconductor market, from smart connected devices to autonomous vehicles and 5G communications. But challenges remain that hinder the realization of these opportunities. It should also be noted that the path to digitalization does not always bring a huge return.

Yet all of this has created unprecedented complexity and disruption across the industry. The question is: where should we start, and which areas can we focus on to quickly realize ROI?

Semiconductor Companies Are Doing More With Less

In this fast-paced global market, companies must reduce product costs and bring them to market faster to remain competitive. As a result, semiconductor companies face ongoing challenges that strain engineering resources and development speed while also increasing productivity and quality. And the reality is that every company worldwide is doing more with fewer resources.

Their engineering teams are global in scale due to company acquisitions and/or diverse supply chains. Like many other high-tech industries, while striving to remain competitive, semiconductor companies face numerous internal challenges. Their design evaluation processes require working with data from multiple systems.

Global design teams still communicate and share information via file transfer protocol (FTP) sites. Engineers spend too much time searching for or recreating information. As a result, design changes are not synchronized, and engineering change order (ECO) processes take too long and incur excessive costs.

Achieve Faster Revenue by Reducing NPI Cycle Time

The need to adapt and change becomes increasingly clear as we see how fast this industry is evolving. While semiconductor design and manufacturing are part of the same supply chain, they have traditionally been two separate silos with limited collaboration and overlap. For companies to capitalize on rapidly changing business demands, design and manufacturing must be on the same page. Immediate action is required to seize the new opportunities this presents.

Today, true collaboration is essential for companies managing new product introduction (NPI) to achieve faster growth. A lack of flexible systems, agility, and real collaboration continues to hold them back.

Inefficient resource utilization often results in missed critical deadlines. It also leads to quality and supplier issues, delays, and ultimately reduced time-to-revenue. This means that a digital strategy is now essential, as time-to-market (TTM) is less than one year.

By enabling cross-functional collaboration and having an integrated NPI process across the entire business, companies gain the foresight needed to know they can produce what they design. They can manage their NPI products and projects seamlessly and achieve rapid volume.

With the addition of project and program management solutions connecting planning with real task execution, processes are updated automatically, products are delivered, linked, and tracked, and project status is better understood.

Efficient and Secure Reuse of Intellectual Property (IP)

Semiconductor companies use many tools and processes across their entire value chain. However, with so many systems, it is difficult to track where information goes.

All stakeholders must be able to collaborate, visualize, and validate data across the business. They must also quickly search design data to maximize reuse. This is particularly important in providing a well-known starting point for rapid design development. It enables intellectual property (IP) reuse across product lines.

To achieve this, companies must establish automated, efficient, structured workflows and change processes while ensuring changes are accurately reflected across functional areas and data representations. Therefore, it is critical to manage data in a secure source, regardless of where or how it was created.

Measuring the Maturity of Semiconductor Digitalization

We know that most companies start their digitalization journey at different points and develop it over time. While there are many best-in-class solutions and tools to choose from, no single solution can do everything. Industry leaders see the value in having an enterprise-wide view, not just optimized point solutions.

When discussing a company’s digital maturity, it is important to understand what digital maturity means. If the tools you choose do not work well together in a flexible open ecosystem, your efforts will not achieve the desired results.

See this webinar!

How do leading semiconductor manufacturers manage the complex and short lifecycle of their products?

To answer this question and shed more light on the topic, Siemens invites you to our online seminar “Innovating Semiconductors for Profit.” Guest speaker Julie Fraser, Vice President of Research in Operations and Manufacturing for Tech-Clarity, will share insights.

Julie Fraser focuses on Industry 4.0 and the business value of Smart Manufacturing and leads MESA’s Smart Manufacturing Community Groups. As a prominent industry voice, she is well-qualified to walk you through research findings and provide insights on how mindset and process changes can lead to tremendous success.

Source: Siemens

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