Aligning key success factors with value activities: Case of the analogy IC Design Industry

Each industry has unique managerial factors that have a critical impact on a firm's success. These factors, known as key success factors, are the characteristics, conditions, or managerial variables that need to be maintained to achieve prosperity in a given industry. Although techniques for identifying KSFs have been developed, the determination of their priorities will help management allocate resources. Furthermore, connecting KSFs to a firm's major value activities will assist management in planning the firm's business. This article proposes an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) which integrates and operationalizes the theories associated with the KSFs and value chain for the above purposes. The proposed process is applied to the analog integrated circuit (IC) design industry to illustrate its efficacy.