Decision Paradigms in the Semiconductor Supply Chain: A Survey and Analysis

An online questionnaire was used to survey the current state of decision making paradigms for the semiconductor supply chain and to identify future trends and needs. A logistic regression analysis on the survey data clearly shows that decision makers tend to use optimization techniques in the front-end planning decisions, and to make them in a slow clockspeed fashion. As products move downstream in the supply chain, it is more likely that decision makers will use their tacit knowledge to make back-end configuration and allocation decisions quickly and frequently. Survey results also showed that executives want optimization methods to be used across the supply chain, creating a need to develop heuristic-based methods that will set the stage for optimizing final allocation decisions.