Manufacturing Excellence, Still Achievable
in the
Terry Pope, Executive Director, Semiconductor Manufacturing
Skyworks
Solutions, Inc.,
Keywords: Cycle Time, Yield, MPCpS, Manufacturing Excellence, OTD, Core Teams
Abstract
While GaAs manufacturing is
still strongly represented by US based wafer fabs, if it follows in the
footsteps of silicon, it will only be a matter of time before it is dominated
by offshore foundries. GaAs will never reach
the volumes or revenue of silicon and therefore does not have the same level of
attraction for venture capital but unless US based factories are competitive in
productivity, cost, yields and quality they will eventually be shutdown in
favor of the lower labor cost