整合元件製造商演進至輕資產商業模式之效率分析

Abstract

一九九○至二○一○的二十年間，日本企業在整體半導體市場的市佔率從百分之四十六大幅下滑至百分之二十，而美國晶片生產商的市佔率從百分之三十九上升至百分之五十，亞太地區晶片製造商的市佔率從百分之四持續上升至亮眼的百分之二十一。在此同時，世界各地有許多半導體企業將其商業模式不斷地演進，而此種演進能幫助企業達到改善營運績效及提昇市佔率的目標。對這些企業而言，瞭解所選擇的商業模式是如何影響企業的持續競爭優勢是非常重要的。因此，本研究運用無母數效率前緣的資料包絡分析法，針對五十家半導體領先廠商進行不同商業模式與營運效率間關係之探討。資料包絡分析是一種廣泛使用的方法用來衡量決策單位同儕間的效率。本文建構一個由四項輸入及一項輸出變數組成的資料包絡分析方法，就二十三家整合元件製造商及二十七家純製造外包企業提供整體績效的指標。研究指出，在競爭激烈的半導體產業，當資本投資上揚的同時，越來越多的整合元件製造商與合約代工企業結合成合作夥伴，向輕資產或純製造外包的商業模式邁進，而這種商業模式的轉變能讓整合元件製造商受益於經營績效與效率的提昇。研究結果簡述如下。首先，純製造外包企業平均而言比整合元件製造商更有效率，同時在銷貨成本及總資產的管理方面也比整合元件製造商表現更佳。第二，許多整合元件製造商透過停止生產設施的擴張以及外包服務比率的提高來達到績效提昇的目的，同時也縮短了與純製造外包企業的效率差距。第三，整合元件製造商泰半是在資源輸入項加倍而輸出項未達到雙倍的狀態下營運，採取輕資產或純製造外包的商業模式，能讓整合元件製造商的資源做有效的分配，並協助企業提昇競爭效率。最後，整合元件製造商在減少總資產及銷售暨一般管理費用的浪費上仍有很大空間，同時純製造外包企業在研究發展費用及銷售暨一般管理費用項目上顯現較大的投入差額值。這些低效率企業的非零投入差額值可以提供給所有半導體企業一個方向，重新組合自身的資源並提出一些可行的效率改善方案。資料包絡分析法能更加準確的分析企業效率低落的來源以及企業有哪些薄弱的環節，如此，企業可作出相對應的努力來提昇績效。成功的整合元件製造商所採取的卓越商業模式可做為其他企業的標竿，這種重新聚焦在核心競爭力的作法能讓企業再度成長。

Over the two decades 1990-2010, Japanese companies’ overall share of the semiconductor market dropped sharply from 46 to just 20 percent, while the US chip producers’ share increased from 39 to 50 percent and Asia Pacific chip makers continued to increase their dominant share from 4 to 21 percent. During this period, the business models of many semiconductor companies around the world evolved to help them achieve their goals of improving operating performance and gaining market share. It is important for semiconductor companies to understand how the business models they adopted affected their companies’ sustainable competitive advantages. In this study, the operating efficiencies of fifty leading semiconductor companies were explored using a non-parametric efficient frontier method − data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA is a widely used method for measuring the efficiency of peer decision making units (DMUs). A DEA model consisting of four input variables and one output variable was built to provide an overall performance index considering twenty-three semiconductor integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) and twenty-seven pure manufacturing outsourcing (PMO) companies. The analysis showed that as capital investment rose in the competitive semiconductor industry, more and more IDMs have benefited from partnering with contract foundry companies and moving toward a business model based on asset-light or PMO, resulting in better operating performance and efficiency. Research findings can be briefly summarized as follows. First, PMO companies are more efficient on average than IDMs. They manage their cost of goods sold (COGS) and total assets better than IDMs. Second, many IDMs substantially improved their performance and narrowed the gap with PMO companies by halting manufacturing facilities expansion and beginning to rely more on outsourcing services for semiconductor manufacturing. Third, IDMs tend to operate at doubling input less than doubles output. Asset-light or PMO business model adoption could provide IDMs a better resource allocation and help them to improve competitive efficiency. Finally, IDM companies still have more room to reduce the waste of total assets and selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses, and PMO companies have large input slacks of research and development (R&D) expenses and SG&A expenses. Non-zero input slacks for inefficient companies can give IDM and PMO companies a direction to reorganize their resources and provide some feasible alternatives. DEA could identify the source that causes the inefficiency more accurately and provided the detection of the weak areas so that appropriate effort can be made to improve performance. The superior business models adopted by more successful IDMs could be benchmarks for other firms to refocus on their core competences and hence rose again.