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 […]
Challenges to Managing Demand in a Distribution-based Model
If the customer on your sales order isn’t the end customer for your product(s), you may be a high tech company with a distribution-based demand model! While this is a great way to increase sales and revenue for your company, it can be challenging to manage your demand without the right processes and solutions in […]
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, […]
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: […]
Odata Connections: Microsoft Power BI & Excel
Microsoft Power BI is a highly popular topic during Tensoft’s Momentum conference. Below is a partial transcription of one such session that covered some of the API connections for Tensoft SemiOps and DemandOps. “First place we’re going to start is with our SemiOps APIs. What we see here at the top is the URL used […]
Multi-currency Procurement for Outsourced Manufacturing in Semiconductor Industry
One of the best features in Tensoft SemiOps is multi-currency procurement. In SemiOps, there are two forms of currency – functional and procurement. The functional currency is the currency that SemiOps uses for costing, variances, and valuing inventory. The procurement currency is the currency that you use when you procure or purchase through the Purchase […]
What Does Tensoft SemiOps Have That My Spreadsheet Doesn’t?
If you’ve been in the semiconductor industry for any length of time, you’ve probably seen some of the world’s most spectacular spreadsheets. You may have even created one of these masterpieces of supply chain planning and execution yourself. If so, our hats are off to you! The semiconductor supply chain is famously complex, so managing […]
An Overview of Inventory Transfers in Tensoft SemiOps
In Tensoft SemiOps, there are three types of inventory transfers – regular transfer, issue and inventory disposition. Transfer: A transfer is used for transferring inventory from one location to another in either an available or quarantine status. Above is a screenshot of the transfer screen. Here you have the Transaction Date where you can select […]
A Traditional BOM in Tensoft SemiOps
Semiconductor manufacturing typically requires a “one-to-many” production process where wafers move to die, and die are then moved through multiple assembly and packing processes to provide multiple outcomes from a single wafer. This is achieved in Tensoft SemiOps through an inverted BOM model. An inverted BOM is an essential feature for systems to efficiently handle […]
The Trick to Supporting a Semiconductor Startup Ramp
As anyone familiar with the semiconductor industry knows, there’s a lot of variation in what semiconductor design-based organizations make. Tensoft’s customers include companies that make silicon and compound integrated circuits, MEMS devices, LED, RF, solid state, and solar technologies. All of these need to manage global production across multiple vendors. And, they also need to […]