A Systematic Cycle Time Reduction Procedure for Enhancing the Competitiveness and Sustainability of a Semiconductor Manufacturer

Toly Chen
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Toly Chen: Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, Feng Chia University, 100, Wenhwa Road, Seatwen, Taichung City 407, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2013, vol. 5, issue 11, 1-16

Abstract: Cycle time reduction plays an important role in improving the competitiveness and sustainability of a semiconductor manufacturer. However, in the past, cycle time reduction was usually unplanned owing to the lack of a systematic and quantitative procedure. To tackle this problem, a systematic procedure was established in this study for planning cycle time reduction actions to enhance the competitiveness and sustainability of a semiconductor manufacturer. First, some controllable factors that are influential to the job cycle time are identified. Subsequently, the relationship between the controllable factors and the job cycle time is fitted with a back propagation network. Based on this relationship, actions to shorten the job cycle time can be planned. The feasibility and effectiveness of an action have to be assessed before it can be taken in practice. An example containing the real data of hundreds of jobs has been used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed methodology. In addition, the financial benefits of the cycle time reduction action were analyzed, which provided the evidence that the proposed methodology enabled the sustainable development of the semiconductor manufacturer, since capital adequacy is very important in the semiconductor manufacturing industry.

Keywords: competitiveness; sustainability; cycle time reduction; semiconductor; back propagation network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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