Planning

Planning Function Paper

Planning in the Semiconductor business is not like planning a day at the beach or even a day at the office. You have to be prepared for the next generation of node technology before the customer has even started taping out there final products. Taping out the product is the step before you send it to manufacturing for the first on wafer employment of the design. You need to be two steps ahead of your of rival company otherwise you are four steps behind. You need to be planning on what you need to do if you fail at getting your customer to buy the tool you have built. Being able to make dynamic management decisions that enable you to stay ahead of the competition blurs the lines between wrong and right. Being able to keep legal, ethic and business principles at the forefront of you are planning from the CEO down to the site supervisor. This will make sure the company will not be on the front of the Wall Street Journal as the next scandal that would send your company into downward spin that affects the shareholders.

For instance in 2001 or company, Novellus Systems Inc. developed an advanced liquid chemical delivery system. This system enabled or company to use a chemical that no other company at the time. Using this chemical allowed Novellus Systems to achieve the most advanced uniformity between wafers the industry as ever seen. So the reader understands in a semiconductor tool every time the tool processes a wafer there is slight difference between every wafer that is processed this is called uniformity. On most normal semiconductor tools at this time, the difference is between five to six percent. The chemical delivery system Novellus design allowed us to achieve a within wafer uniformity of less the two percent.

After many years of testing Novellus put this advanced liquid delivery in a costumer site. While the tool was being installed at this costumer site Novellus was putting together the patent. The patent was not complete by the time the tool was completed with the installation. During the install of the tool, a rival company was able to obtain the design and chemical used for the new process. They somehow managed to complete the patent process before we could. The ensuing court battle lasted many years and cost Novellus systems Inc. about 10 million dollars. In the end, the court sided with us.

This is a clear example of how poor business ethics leads to legal troubles. Management plays a key role in understanding how the choices people make in your company effect the overall image of your company. The company that tried to steal our idea suffered fines and public distrust for a while. In or business this a common practice and even my company is not perfect. During the above situation, management was not aware of what was going on during the install of the tool. Management left it up to the field service engineers to make sure that no one was allowed in the area of this tool. The rival company comprised the field