همکاری عمودی در صنعت نیمه رسانا: چارچوب تصمیم برای روابط زنجیره تامین

Vertical collaboration problem focuses on integrating and modeling the decision problems of the suppliers and buyers together with the market intermediary by identifying the inefficiencies in the traditional marketplace and aligning the incentives of members in the e-marketplace. The present work develops and solves real life e-marketplace models for complex buyers–suppliers procurement problems by estimating the order quantities in the collaborated supply chain. The newsvendor framework considers demand to be independent of the selling price as is generally the case in the semiconductor industry supply chain dealing with techno-savvy customers. The vertical collaboration process would be more effective if the length of the planning horizon and order size is considered as a negotiation parameter between the buyer and supplier. It is observed that the supplier’s expected profit function increases with the buyers’ ordering quantity, which is important in characterizing the general structure of the collaboration scheme of the supply chain.

Due to globalization and sustained demand growth, the semiconductor industries are focusing more to sustain their customer base and to enhance revenue opportunities; so, they must manage successive technological innovations effectively (Cao and Zhang, 2011 and Fabbe-Costes et al., 2011). The most ideal approach is to introduce high margin innovative products at the right time through optimal use of the resources and realignment of the supply chain members to adjust to this trend (Ku, Gurumurthy, & Kao, 2007). Due to rapid evolution and change of technology, the future semiconductor manufacturers must work collaboratively with its extended supply chain to bring about enhanced synchronization of procurement business functions (Wu et al., 2005 and Flynn et al., 2010). The collaborative activities include information sharing, joint relationship effort, and dedicated investments, which lead to improved customer satisfaction and supply chain performance (Nyaga, Whipple, & Lynch, 2010). The collaborative relationships, based on trust and commitment with their supply chain partners, are critical to achieve efficiencies, flexibility, and sustainable competitive advantage (Chen et al., 2011, Cao and Zhang, 2011 and Panayides and Lun, 2009). This collaborative advantage is the strategic benefits gained over competitors in the marketplace through partner enabled inventory centralization and ordering, and supply chain partnering, which is the desired synergistic outcome (Cao & Zhang, 2010). The semiconductor industry sector is characterized by a number of key and unique characteristics from the perspective of product features and the sector’s structure, where collaborative practices are developed in response to the economic pressures and customer requirement, driving the evolution of the chain and encourage greater horizontal and vertical coordination (Kapur, Peters, & Berman, 2003). With the objective of manufacturing and supplying a specific product or component, or locating new enterprises, all enterprises in the semiconductor manufacturing cooperate as synergetic unit to pursue for success (Zhang, Xu, & Wang, 2004). The vertical collaboration problem in the semiconductor industry forms the basis of multi-echelon inventory theory, since it considers only two stock keeping locations, i.e., buyer and supplier. Classical works in multi-echelon inventory theory assume that these entities cooperate and hence solve their problems using a centralized approach (Goyal, 1976). This theory suggests integrating and modeling the decision problems of the suppliers and buyers together with the market intermediary. This is a valid assumption if the SC entities belong to the same company or operate under long-term agreements, such as supplier-owned inventory (SOI) systems (Centikaya and Lee, 2000 and Centikaya and Lee, 2002). Supply chain management (SCM) considers both logistics and information issues as well as dominance relationships between the entities. As a result, SC studies focus on more than the system wide optimization of inventory problems. The typical activities which are critical to the management of vertical collaborative relationships from a procurement perspective are: selecting suppliers, motivating, time of involvement, assigning physical and human resources, information sharing, synchronizing standards and coordination among supply chain members. So, any member and any relationship within a supply network are affected by the actions of other members, and thus have to cope with these to enable successful collaborative relationships (Grover & Saeed, 2007). The emerging idea is that the greater the extent to which manufacturers engage in e-market enabled transactions with upstream and downstream members the better the performance (Rosenzweig, 2009). The research reveals that the collaborative e-marketplace is still a relatively new business model (Wu & Chuang, 2010). It has potential for growth in optimizing supply chain networks, enabling vertical collaboration between buyers, suppliers and logistic providers (Wang, Potter, Naim, & Beevor, 2011). Current research in vertical collaboration in semiconductor industry focuses on inventory management within the firm as well as throughout the supply chain, to gain cost advantage. This collaborative procurement can be operationalized through the participation of all SC members in a private exchange (e-market) to gain cost advantage and enhance responsiveness. So, it is imperative to consider both e-market (centralized) models and traditional market (decentralized) models for complex supply/replenishment problems with the objective of obtaining collaborated decentralized solutions for these problems. In order to maintain and improve the competitive power of these industries, it is critical to select agile, competent and compatible partners quickly and rationally during the formation phase of the collaborative relationship. Further, an adaptable and reasonable modeling approach is necessary to determine the nature of relationships between buyer and supplier enterprise (Saen, 2007). This may be possible by developing an analytical framework to generate an evaluation system and to provide the information regarding the nature or intensity of buyer–supplier relationships. This approach would facilitate decision-making pertaining to vertical collaboration in the semiconductor industry supply chain. The general relationships between the members of fabless semiconductor industry supply chain (subcontractors, and customers) are depicted in Fig. 1. As the customer demands are placed at finished goods level, manufacturing requirements are communicated to final test, assembly, wafer probe, and to the foundries. Efficient means of communication are necessary to ensure the success of the process, which can be achieved through the participation of the supply chain partners in the e-marketplace. Full-size image (38 K) Fig. 1. Relationship between members in a semiconductor supply chain (pull system).

The present work aims at developing generic analytical modeling frameworks for vertical collaboration initiatives in the semiconductor industry supply chain dealing with short lifecycle products where the demand is independent of the selling price. The procurement process has been investigated by characterizing the market space into three different types, such as traditional marketplace, hybrid marketplace and e-marketplace. This process has explored the conditions in which vertical collaboration works, and has been extended through simulation to comprehensively assess the nature of relationship with individual supply chain members and to evaluate whether such an initiative is really feasible. It has also investigated the perspectives of information sharing in collaborative networks and its implementation in the semiconductor industry supply chain. The results of the work indicate that the proposed approach results in fair and reasonable conclusions. The outcome of this analysis is to provide an effective method for the semiconductor industry supply chain members to evaluate the success of such shared collaborative procurement systems in a structured and simple manner. So, this research is significant because it provides a comprehensive vertical collaboration assessment tool for operational and tactical decision making. The contributions to the literature on supply chain collaboration resulted from this study are: (1) Collaborative efforts among chain members should be encouraged in order to improve operational and tactical performance. (2) As the SC members have varied perception about high and low performing collaborative practices, it may be recommended that the chain members should create a negotiation mechanism that encourages the vertical collaborative practices to achieve better performance. The proposed method may be equally useful in analyzing and assessing the success of any collaborative procurement in other similar industries. The applicability of the proposed schemes for the collaborative initiatives may be different for different industries. However, the proposed schemes may present general frameworks for such initiatives in most industries dealing with short life cycle products. So, the chain members need to modify and customize the approaches for collaborative practices that suit their unique environment under which they operate. As the expectation from the supply chain may be different for different products and industries, which poses the major limitation of the present work. Other limitations of this study are as follows: (1) The study has not considered the competition from the similar SC members from a global perspective, and (2) The study did not consider the management structures of collaborative procurement initiative from a global perspective. However, it seems that only the threat of global competition can motivate the formation of large-scale vertical collaboration initiative in industries. These limitations lead to several directions for future research as depicted below. (a) From the perspective of vertical collaboration, this research has drawn conclusion from dyadic relationships only, i.e., buyer–supplier. So, extending this research focus to more complex supply chain relationships across the entire chain would be useful. Further, some quantitative testing of the model in similar industries is needed with the aim of theoretical replication. (b) Customer order arrival rate plays an important role in the vertically collaborated supply chain system. The present work has assumed the order arrival as a Poisson process. With the increase in the customer orders, in many situations, the classical Poisson process order arrival may not be appropriate. In reality, the order arrival rate is typically non-homogeneous, i.e., the arrival rate typically varies with time. This occurs due to the customer market in which demand is dependent on price. Analysis of such situations in the semiconductor industry supply chain dealing with short life cycle products would be an important area of future research. (c) In reality, most of the suppliers have the right to set their own selling price, which can directly affect the market demand. Thus, in a price-endogenous setting, the decision which maximizes the expected profit should be determined jointly with respect to the inventory level (ordering quantity) and the selling price. Because of the complexity of the decision based on both the price and ordering quantity, the collaboration in the case of the price-endogenous scenario has not been fully studied, which creates scope for further research. In summary, the present study has investigated the operational and tactical decision policies for vertical collaboration problems in semiconductor industry supply chain. These policies would offer structural and quantitative insight into the interplay between vertical collaboration and joint replenishment decision-making. These policies may also offer insights into supplier selection problem for such a collaborative initiative. In reality, a mixed-mode collaborative relationship is highly desirable where the buyer collaborates with a network of competing supplier for resource and capacity sharing, which is the scope for future research.