Making real-time precision adjustments to world-wide chip production

Intel has recently embarked on a mission to improve its supply chain responsiveness. Currently production lead times are around 4 months requiring a forecast a quarter out. Most customer demand changes happen within lead time since customers only know their demand a few weeks before shipment. While stable production plans help maintain factory utilization rates their inflexibility can also lead to missed revenue opportunities or unneeded inventory. The challenge then is to make planning processes agile enough to react to late demand changes. The FAB has a 2-3 month throughput time or latency. The subsequent Assembly-Test (ATM) operation has a 1-2 month latency. Increasing competition requires the striking of a balance between competitive service levels and excess inventory. This Thesis looks to develop ways of making more real-time tactical demand updates to production plans used by the global factory network to improve Supply Chain Responsiveness. Using business analytics and organizational processes analysis, ways of making late demand changes to the production plan are evaluated. The project focuses on Intel's global ATM network due to its proximity to end customer demand. A holistic solution to use available intelligence is proposed. The focus is on creating data visibility across the supply chain and on putting feedback loops in planning processes to intercept planning processes at various points with new information as and when it becomes available.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Pai, Neelesh G

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Simchi-Levi and Don Rosenfield.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50091

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/50091