Browsing by Author "Chien, Chen-Fu"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

A case study to evaluate the productivity changes of the thermal power plants of the Taiwan power company
(2007-09-01)
Chien, Chen-Fu
;
Chen, Wen-Chih
;
Lo, Feng-Yu
;
Lin, Yi-Chiech
;
工業工程與管理學系
This paper developed an approach based on data envelopment analysis and Malmquist productivity index to investigate the performance of power plants and conducted an empirical study with eight thermal power plants in Taiwan. The analysis results show the productivity improvements, and thus, help Taiwan Power Company to monitor and diagnose changes in the productivity of its thermal power plants. Furthermore, this study also provides specific directions for improvements to increase competitiveness in the face of the continuing liberalization of the Taiwanese power generation market.
AN INDIRECT WORKFORCE (RE)ALLOCATION MODEL FOR SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING
(2008)
Chien, Chen-Fu
;
Chen, Wen-Chih
;
Hsu, Shao-Chung
;
工業工程與管理學系
;
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management
Semiconductor industry is a capital intensive and knowledge intensive industry, in which human resource management and human capital enhancement is increasingly important. To maintain competitive human resource, it is critical to develop a decision framework for headcount planning and workforce allocation for indirect labors. Motivated by the needs in real setting, this study aims to develop a model for allocating indirect workforce among semiconductor fabrication facilities to meet expected outputs and labor productivity improvement. Workforce allocation and reallocation based on the overall corporate workforce level is essential so that the shortage or exceed workforce will be balanced among different production sites. The key to achieve this purpose is the proper understanding of real requirements of each production site according to its corresponding tasks assigned. Non-parametric activity analysis approach is used for the workforce requirement estimation given delegated tasks. The estimation is based on the best performance from the past with adjustments reflecting the expected productivity growth.
ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF WAFER FABRICATION FACILITIES
(2008)
Chen, Wen-Chih
;
Chien, Chen-Fu
;
Chou, Ming-Hsuan
;
工業工程與管理學系
;
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management
Semiconductor industry is capital intensive and competitive, and thus efficiently utilizing resources to provide products and services is essential for maintaining competitive advantages. Knowing whether the resource is properly utilized is the foundation for future improvements and/or decision making. This study investigates the economic efficiency of fabrication facility (fab) operations. We develop a two-stage overall efficiency model, which clearly defines and explains the "real" performance of fab production operations and the non-production issues. The model provides an overall performance index while considering different aspects. A single performance index can be used to evaluate and rank the performance for period review. Factors affecting performance can be identified. Furthermore, according to a real case, an ex post relative efficiency analysis is conducted and the initial results are reported. The case study can help providing diagnosis for inefficient production facilities and identifying best practices of efficient production units.
Evaluating capacity pooling strategy in semiconductor manufacturing: a productivity perspective study
(2011)
Chen, Wen-Chih
;
Chien, Chen-Fu
;
工業工程與管理學系
;
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management
Recently, increasing attention has been focusing on the concept of the borderless fab, which expands capacity through a manufacturing strategy rather than capital investments. In a borderless fab, the capacity of several wafer fabs is pooled, and partially completed wafers are allowed to move from one fab to another. This paper proposes a model to evaluate the potential benefits of adopting capacity pooling from the macro-viewpoint. We demonstrate our model using actual full-scale fab-level operational data, and the result reveals that capacity pooling can improve monthly capacity by 3% on average.
Measuring relative performance of wafer fabrication operations: a case study
(2011-06-01)
Chen, Wen-Chih
;
Chien, Chen-Fu
;
工業工程與管理學系
;
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management
This paper was motivated by a request to review relative operations performance for various fabrication facilities within a leading Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer. Performance evaluation is important but often controversial. To dispel the controversy, we propose a two-stage fabrication process model to systematically analyze metrics currently adopted, and show that the commonly used wafer-based indices are biased for operations performance. Instead, they should be decomposed into productivity, representing true operations performance, and manufacturability. We suggest the use of data envelopment analysis because of its confirmed linkages to other widely used productivity measures and its overall performance via relative comparisons. The case study illustrates how the two-stage model evaluates and analyzes real-world operations, and the empirical results show the drawbacks of conventional methods.
Requirement estimation for indirect workforce allocation in semiconductor manufacturing
(2010)
Chien, Chen-Fu
;
Chen, Wen-Chih
;
Hsu, Shao-Chung
;
工業工程與管理學系
;
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management
This work, based on a real case, presents a model to estimate indirect workforce requirements of semiconductor fabrication facilities (fabs) so that the workforce can be fairly allocated. There is a concern in a real setting to fairly allocate the overall corporate workforce among the fabs, particularly when they compete in performance, and properly determining the actual requirement is the most critical in the decision process. The actual requirements of the workforce, especially the indirect workforce, for fabs may be indeterminate due to the lack of a well-defined workforce-output relationship. This paper presents a non-parametric frontier approach for estimating the indirect workforce, and the estimate is based on the best past performance adjusted to reflect the expected productivity growth. An empirical study was conducted in a leading foundry in Taiwan that has a number of 8-inch fabs. The proposed (re)allocation approach can provide an explicit decision support mechanism to balance the workloads in light of various production environments to enable an equitable basis for performance evaluation to foster constructive competition among the fabs.