Mitel Semiconducter Case Essay

Intel operates in an industry, which is comprised of products involving high research and development costs, continuous product improvement and new innovations. The companies in the industry are having high economies of scale and are knowledge based. It helps both the service and manufacturing sectors in the growth process. Intel is positioned as a leading company with its ability to adapt to technological changes and its strong relations with other businesses who are major buyers of integrated circuits. The industry in which it operates is very competitive and comes with high risks as

Try to reduce overall production runs by aggregating different orders, thereby increasing batch size. Marketing strategy of delay in turnaround time is required to achieve this

From pioneering in memory DRAM semicon to exiting the low-margin DRAM market – Intel was primarily a Memory semicon manufacturer before it entered microprocessors in 1980s. Its added value in the memory industry in 1970s was very high because of its advances in MOS process to produce DRAM. However, with increase in competition and the advancement of Japanese conglomerates in the memory industry Intel was forced to play a chasing game to improve performance and reduce costs. In the mid-1980s, Intel’s market share in the core memory business was <1%, however it was continuing to invest in this domain. They finally exited the DRAM market, which was more of a cash burner with low-margins.

The semiconductor market in business communication is expected to have a compound average growth rate of almost 18% over the next five years. Our current market share within this segment is slightly more than 7%, and management wants to see the share of the market double by the end of the century. Figure 1 represents the projected growth of the semiconductor market in business communication and Mitel Semiconductor over the next five years.

One of the biggest needs for improvement was the assembly process. Although several changes were made throughout the years, quality and efficiency still fell below expectations. Hinrichs implemented the newly developed assembly which consists of two separate work stations that allowed operators in the adjacent stations to share the expensive balancer machine. These assembly cells were much more efficient as workers were no longer forced to wait for another person or machine in the process. Each cell was built like the other with quick turn set-up which created flexibility in the process while also reducing tooling inventory by almost a half. Now cells

While yet to be proven commercially, the PI process claimed to be easy and cheap to incorporate into the

The process was labor intensive, but fully integrated manufacturing only required a $1 million investment in machine tools. Prefabricated parts were available for assemblers, who could enter the market with an investment of just $300,000. Furthermore, no competitor held any significant patents.

Also, Nucleon is mainly a R&D firm and lacks core competencies and capabilities to support large scale manufacturing. As discussed earlier, the changes in organization required to pursue large scale manufacturing for the first time with no significant skill sets, manufacturing know-how and experience can pose a very high risk and detrimental impact on Nucleon’s long term success. Licensing with a proven partner will be a low risk and safe strategy in short term.

Littlefield Technologies (LT) has developed another DSS product. The new product is manufactured using the same process as the product in the assignment “Capacity Management at Littlefield Technologies” — neither the process sequence nor the process time distributions at each tool have changed. The LT factory began production by investing most of its cash into capacity and inventory. Specifically, on day 0, the factory began operations with three stuffers, two testers, and one tuner, and a raw materials inventory of 9600 kits. This left the factory with zero cash on hand. Customer demand

The equipment is normally used to manufacture prototype boards, so its full capacity is never used. Since this new circuit board will not be manufactured in very large quantities, the machine will suffice, although some additional “add-ons” as well as supplies will be needed to produce this particular board. There is a 20% chance that equipment failure may cause a significant problem and, if it does, the impact is estimated at $50,000.

However, RLK’s competitors are downsizing and outsourcing R&D and exploiting on the cost advantages. If RLK decides to invest more money into R&D and should the new product stall on launch,

This industry is highly innovative and knows that every 18 months the amount of transistors which can be etched on to a silicon wafer increases, thus chip performance doubles and so does the potential profits. This results in technical development which at times can be so fast that it’s difficult to keep up with advances and fully examine them. And what is even worse is that you can add to it the fact, that it is common practice and procedure among the semiconductor chip producers to contain their production processes as a form of trade secret in order to advance their own technological breakthroughs. It is not difficult to identify the potential health hazards experienced by those who are involved in the occupation of semiconductor wafer

The company under Mr Nakanishi has backed away from consumer electronics and the components that go inside them. Instead, the company is focused on global infrastructure projects such as building a railway system in the U.K. or a nuclear power plant in Lithuania. Consumer businesses are forecast to account for less than 10% of Hitachi's revenue in year 2012 nearly half the level of just a year ago. Its infrastructure businesses, meanwhile, will account for two-thirds of Hitachi's total revenue this year and almost 80% of its profit. This is due to fierce competition among Japanese companies such as NEC Corp., Toshiba Corp., and Fujitsu Ltd. The sale and construction of expensive infrastructure projects also carries risk.

of a circuit-board plant of a large computer manufacturer that was also plagued by low throughput.

Foxconn devotion to develop a nanotech, Nano measure, thermal treatment, wireless network, CAD/CAE, environmental protection, optical plating technique, SMT, Nano processing and a network CMOS chips which will then allow Foxconn to be able to accumulate over 25,000 patents that are granted worldwide by the year of 2010.