Price competition has become one of the most critical elements in the competitive environment of the semiconductor industry, caused by over-production and over-competition. At the same time, investments in test equipment and technology for test processes have increased since high-tech products with multi-functions have been developed gradually and the equipment for testing those products needs to perform multi-functions with high accuracy. Accordingly, the cost reduction is imperative to get the price competitive advantage in the test process, and the productivity improvement can be an efficient way to achieve this goal. In addition, the due date performance in the test process is a critical factor for customer satisfaction because the test process is final process before delivering products to customers. Therefore, productivity improvement in the test process should also aim to improve main performance factors like due date and total flow time.
So far, most productivity improvement activities have been carried out in the field without systematic procedure. As a result, it's difficult to achieve the effective performance in the competitive environment. This study aims at providing a systematic procedure of productivity improvement in the test process.
The core factor of this study is PIM (productivity improvement management) model, which is a part of SPM (strategic productivity management) model. Five main considerations for PIM model are obstructive factors of productivity, influential factors of productivity, organizational abilities, competitive abilities, and sequencing rules, which were extracted through the literature review including the features of semiconductor manufacturing system. In particular, in consideration of resource limitation of manufacturing system, the analysis of critical variables to give a significant influence to main performance factors was added to PIM model, and it would be possible to maximize the efficiency of improvement activities by concentrating resources on those variables.
An important implication for the productivity improvement is that all influence factors should be considered as a point of integration and systematic view. This is because in general each factor interacts with each other, and organization problems like the conscious gaps between hierarchies should be solved in advance before launching other activities to concentrate the organizational ability on one direction.
While analyzing main factors of productivity improvement model, the critical problems of manufacturing system can be cleared and the plan for the improvement can be more realistic and efficient for test processes.
