Future research directions for mastering end-to-end semiconductor supply chains

The supply chain operational excellence has become a key competitive advantage in the globalized world economy. Since all manufactured technology products contain and depend on semiconductor components, an efficient semiconductor industry is crucially important for the broad manufacturing sector. Due to the high complexity of semiconductor manufacturing combined with the extreme volatility of the market, a deep understanding of its mechanisms and influencing parameters is essential in order to minimize the costs and to increase the customer satisfaction. There is a need for Agile, Adaptable, and Aligned end-to-end semiconductor supply chains. Over the last decades supply chain management problems have gained increasing popularity in industrial and academic environments. Even though numerous problems have been solved, we identify three areas of improvement. In this position paper, we address three research directions, which we intent on tackling within future research activities. We focus on contract clauses, gambling in collaborative supply chain planning, and simulation approaches for evaluating supply chain models. For each research direction we describe the underlying motivation, the objectives, the methodology, and the modelling approaches.