Kalypso Viewpoints

Semiconductor Product Lifecycle Management

by Bill Poston and Joe Dury on January 15th, 2009

Escalating design costs, growing product complexity, shrinking average sales prices, and the relentless pace of innovation are creating intense pressures on companies in the semiconductor industry. With the industry’s daunting design challenges, accelerated lifecycles, and complex supply chains, it is no wonder that product launch dates, development budgets, and quality targets are frequently missed.

To help understand the industry challenges and possible solutions, Kalypso examined the product innovation, design and launch processes of more than 25 leading global semiconductor companies. Kalypso research and analysis revealed that:

• There is an opportunity for significant improvements in new product development and lifecycle management processes. Semiconductor executives are not content with the status quo.
• Semiconductor companies have been slow to adopt Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) as a solution. Key adoption barriers were cited including: 1) low awareness of PLM solution sets, 2) limited understanding of PLM’s value proposition, and 3) lack of a “standard” semiconductor PLM model.
• While no single, standard model is available, there are PLM solutions targeted at semiconductor companies. A comprehensive PLM offering would include strategic, design, data management, software development, and supply chain capabilities.
• PLM is providing an advantage to early adopters. It helps provide a single version of the truth for product information, enabling better process discipline and more efficient execution.
• Early adopters of PLM are seeing: improved time to market and ramp to volume; reduced design costs and more re-use; better chip quality, design, and manufacturability; more efficient collaboration, control, and communication of product design, development, and engineering change order information; and other strategic benefits.

Semiconductor companies must focus on improving product development to optimize innovation, design, and engineering processes with PLM strategies and solutions. More and more semiconductor firms are finding that a PLM system utilized for its collaborative design records enables better product capability, improved quality and reliability, lower product costs and faster time to market. To be successful, semiconductor companies need to avoid the “big bang” approach of ERP systems and to start small, think big, and build incrementally.

Topics: High Tech, PLM, Semiconductor