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Competitive and Sustainable Semiconductor Manufacturing
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Competitive and Sustainable Semiconductor Manufacturing

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2014) | Viewed by 37350

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Tin-Chih Toly Chen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 University Road, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Interests: ambient intelligence; ergonomics; cloud and virtual manufacturing; applied soft computing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Semiconductors are widely used in our daily lives. They are found in personal computers, notebooks, mobile phones, etc. With the trend of globalization, the competition within the semiconductor manufacturing industry is becoming increasingly fierce. To survive in this industry, every firm must strive to continually improve its competence in one way or another. For example, some firms do not have their own factories, so that they can focus on activities that are more profitable, while others continue expanding their manufacturing capacity to further drive down costs. Other common strategies include outsourcing, blue ocean strategy, green and lean technologies, applying the competitiveness diamond model, developing next-generation technologies, forming alliances, etc.

In contrast, some studies have shown that even with considerable R&D capabilities, semiconductor manufacturers cannot guarantee long-term competitiveness (i.e., sustainability). In addition, in the past, support from the government enabled the continued growth of semiconductor manufacturers in some regions. After such support disappears, maintaining competitiveness and sustainability becomes a big problem. Further, the rise of the Chinese market, and of its manufacturers, bring opportunities and threats to existing firms.

This special issue is intended to provide details regarding sustainable development and competitive strategies, and their applications to semiconductor manufacturing, for researchers in product engineering, industrial engineering, marketing, and business administration, as well as practicing managers/engineers. This special issue features a balance between state-of-the-art research and more conventional reported applications. This special issue also provides a forum for researchers and practitioners to review and disseminate quality research work on competitive and sustainable semiconductor manufacturing strategies and their applications, and to identify critical issues for further developments.

Prof. Dr. Tin-Chih Toly Chen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.


Keywords

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • competitive and sustainable strategy: continuous measurable improvement
  • competitive and sustainable strategy: statistical thinking
  • competitive and sustainable strategy: constraint-focus
  • competitive and sustainable strategy: people development/empowerment
  • competitive and sustainable strategy: knowledge transfer
  • competitive and sustainable strategy: differentiation
  • competitive and sustainable strategy: partnering and collaboration through networking
  • competitive and sustainable strategy: geographic reach
  • the rise of China market and manufacturers – opportunities and threats
  • the role of government support
  • foundry
  • agile manufacturing, lean manufacturing
  • cloud manufacturing
  • advanced semiconductor manufacturing technologies
  • design manufacturability, design into manufacturing, design-manufacturing integration
  • miniaturization
  • competitiveness assessment and enhancement
  • long-term competitiveness, sustainability
  • remanufacturing, green manufacturing
  • virtual factory, internet manufacturing and services
  • benchmarking
  • next-generation wafer fab
  • fab automation
  • other related topics

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

639 KiB  
Article
Government Support, FDI Clustering and Semiconductor Sustainability in China: Case Studies of Shanghai, Suzhou and Wuxi in the Yangtze Delta
by Tsu-Lung Chou, Jung-Ying Chang and Te-Chuan Li
Sustainability 2014, 6(9), 5655-5681; https://doi.org/10.3390/su6095655 - 27 Aug 2014
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 13808
Abstract
With reference to the case studies of Shanghai, Suzhou, and Wuxi, in the Yangtze Delta, China, this paper demonstrates the local possibilities and various development paths for developing an indigenous semiconductor industry, using the government support within foreign direct investment (FDI)-dominated clusters for [...] Read more.
With reference to the case studies of Shanghai, Suzhou, and Wuxi, in the Yangtze Delta, China, this paper demonstrates the local possibilities and various development paths for developing an indigenous semiconductor industry, using the government support within foreign direct investment (FDI)-dominated clusters for the New Industrializing Countries (NICs). Two important policy lessons are identified. The first is that the government may attract FDI and develop high-tech clustering by using policy support, but it does not necessarily provide conducive and positive influences on the sustainable development of domestic semiconductors. The second lesson is that the sustainability of the domestic semiconductor industry in the FDI cluster may start from three connected elements: (1) a pragmatic goal of government support; (2) complementarities of the domestic semiconductors with international leading firms in the market, technology and equipment linkages; and (3) a sustainable capacity of technical learning to drive local developments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Competitive and Sustainable Semiconductor Manufacturing)
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1062 KiB  
Article
Enhancing the Effectiveness of Cycle Time Estimation in Wafer Fabrication-Efficient Methodology and Managerial Implications
by Toly Chen and Yu-Cheng Wang
Sustainability 2014, 6(8), 5107-5128; https://doi.org/10.3390/su6085107 - 11 Aug 2014
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5739
Abstract
Cycle time management plays an important role in improving the performance of a wafer fabrication factory. It starts from the estimation of the cycle time of each job in the wafer fabrication factory. Although this topic has been widely investigated, several issues still [...] Read more.
Cycle time management plays an important role in improving the performance of a wafer fabrication factory. It starts from the estimation of the cycle time of each job in the wafer fabrication factory. Although this topic has been widely investigated, several issues still need to be addressed, such as how to classify jobs suitable for the same estimation mechanism into the same group. In contrast, in most existing methods, jobs are classified according to their attributes. However, the differences between the attributes of two jobs may not be reflected on their cycle times. The bi-objective nature of classification and regression tree (CART) makes it especially suitable for tackling this problem. However, in CART, the cycle times of jobs of a branch are estimated with the same value, which is far from accurate. For these reason, this study proposes a joint use of principal component analysis (PCA), CART, and back propagation network (BPN), in which PCA is applied to construct a series of linear combinations of original variables to form new variables that are as unrelated to each other as possible. According to the new variables, jobs are classified using CART before estimating their cycle times with BPNs. A real case was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The experimental results supported the superiority of the proposed methodology over some existing methods. In addition, the managerial implications of the proposed methodology are also discussed with an example. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Competitive and Sustainable Semiconductor Manufacturing)
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996 KiB  
Article
Strengthening the Competitiveness and Sustainability of a Semiconductor Manufacturer with Cloud Manufacturing
by Toly Chen
Sustainability 2014, 6(1), 251-266; https://doi.org/10.3390/su6010251 - 3 Jan 2014
Cited by 54 | Viewed by 16106
Abstract
Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is a new-generation service-oriented networked manufacturing model that provides distributed users centralized managed manufacturing resources, ability, and services. CMfg is applied here to a semiconductor manufacturing factory. Benefits are classified into five aspects: cost savings, efficiency, additional data analysis capabilities, [...] Read more.
Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is a new-generation service-oriented networked manufacturing model that provides distributed users centralized managed manufacturing resources, ability, and services. CMfg is applied here to a semiconductor manufacturing factory. Benefits are classified into five aspects: cost savings, efficiency, additional data analysis capabilities, flexibility, and closer partner relationships. A strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis is done which guides a semiconductor manufacturer in planning CMfg implementation projects. Simulation of a wafer fabrication factory (wafer fab) is used as an example. Several CMfg services are proposed for assisting the fab simulation activities through the collaboration of cloud service providers, software vendors, equipment suppliers, and the wafer fab. The connection with the competitiveness and sustainability of a wafer fab is also stressed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Competitive and Sustainable Semiconductor Manufacturing)
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