Collaborative design of supply chain management key processes in the semiconductor industry

This study focuses on designing a comprehensive set of key processes for semiconductor manufacturing supply chain and evaluating the relative importance of these key processes. The design and evaluation are performed by a multidisciplinary team consists of over twenty members from both academia and industry. This study adopts focus group methodology and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) for collaboration. The design and evaluation are based on experiences of these research team members who joined a successful supply chain management (SCM) project between the largest semiconductor foundry in the world and the world´s largest semiconductor testing and packaging service provider. The result of the design is a hierarchy consists of 4 dimensions and 15 key processes. The resulting weighting from FAHP analysis indicates that both of the highest-ranking 1 dimension and the highest-ranking 4 factors account for approximately half of the overall weighting in their level. The designed key process hierarchy can serve as a checklist; helping SCM project managers avoids costly failure by ensuring that all key processes are well supported. The weightings provide SCM executives with a reference for the relative importance of these key processes and can also help them make critical decisions.