The following is a transcript of the video clip below, which was taken from the Tensoft SemiOps (previously known as Tensoft FSM) customer webcast entitled “Standard Cost: Theory and Practice in Tensoft FSM,” featuring Bob Scarborough, Tensoft’s CEO. This complimentary training was originally presented live for Tensoft SemiOps customers. Since the instructional material covered in […]
Current Trends in Semiconductor Industry
Over the last year, it’s become common knowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global supply chains – almost every consumer has been affected in one way or another. One of the things that happened in the semiconductor industry is that chip production for the auto industry fell off in 2020 due to auto factory […]
Strategies for Reducing Semiconductor Product Costs
For emerging semiconductor chip companies, the primary goal is to customer acceptance of products and to sell product. However, as chip companies scale, everyone’s attention turns very quickly to lowering costs. It becomes critically important that Operations and Finance work together to achieve strategic goals and to manage costs effectively. In order to do that, […]
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Manufacturing in the Semiconductor Industry
Semiconductor manufacturing stands apart as a unique process when you compare it to other manufacturing processes. From a systems perspective, production in most manufacturing industries is either discrete or process manufacturing – semiconductor manufacturing can be defined as process manufacturing with a discrete outcome. Here’s what I mean by that. The semiconductor manufacturing process is […]
Contract Billing – What’s the Big Deal?
We recently spoke with the Revenue Manager of a mid-market information technology and services company about their revenue recognition process. Her company sells hardware, software, services, and support, in various combinations. These may be sold directly through the channel and on an e-commerce platform. Each of their sales orders has many moving parts including billing […]
An Overview of Production Planning in Tensoft SemiOps
With Tensoft SemiOps Production Planning, you can quickly and accurately schedule backlog shipment dates, drive creation of your production orders (“PR” or production release in SemiOps) and gain insight into action items for your planners related to production scheduling or exception management. All of the information that you need is already available in Tensoft SemiOps: […]
Infographic: How to Measure the Return on Investment (ROI) of an ERP Implementation
A question that we’re often asked is: “How do you estimate the anticipated ROI of an ERP system, and what methodology works best for this?” There are five main areas that should be evaluated to determine this: 1) IT costs, 2) productivity, 3) visibility, 4) risk, and, 5) audit and compliance impacts. Here are some […]
Prioritizing Product Innovation
Our product innovation goals need to match our strategic goals – if we want to grow and best support our customer community, our product development needs to be a central component to our strategy. Strategic product innovation will focus on what ease of use or functionality blocks are needed to move us where we need […]
Supply Chain Optimization – What Is It?
There are a number of definitions for supply chain optimization. Our perspective is a broad definition, where the goal of supply chain optimization is to maximize revenue and/or product margins by building the right thing at the right time for the right people. To achieve this goal requires a sophisticated level of understanding and action. […]
An Introduction to Standard Costing in the Technology Industry
[The following is a partial transcription of the beginning of a recorded Tensoft SemiOps training webcast, which is available to anyone who’s interested – see video here.] “While semiconductor manufacturing is a process, it also has fixed outcomes, which makes it unique. So it’s not really process manufacturing like food, oil and gas, or paint […]