Benchmarking semiconductor manufacturing

We are studying the manufacturing performance of semiconductor wafer fabrication plants in the US, Asia, and Europe. There are great similarities in production equipment, manufacturing processes, and products produced at these plants. Nevertheless, data reported here show that important quantitative measures of productivity vary by factors of 3 to as much as 5 across an international sample of 16 plants. We conducted on-site interviews with manufacturing personnel to better understand reasons for the observed wide variations in productivity. We have identified factors in the areas of information systems, organizational practices, process and technology improvements, and production control that correlate strongly with productivity.