microelectronics industry

Many companies are applying Fourth Industrial Revolution initiatives in manufacturing, though only a few have managed to successfully integrate the smart manufacturing technologies at a scale that allows them to realise significant economic and financial benefits.Known as lighthouse companies, these organisations have taken their smart manufacturing journeys from pilot to integration at scale, serving as beacons to others in overcoming challenges in their production systems through the adoption of leading-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing and advanced analytics.At the recent SEMI Southeast Asia webinar Journey to Recovery of the E E Industry, Dato' Azman Mahmud, Chief Executive Officer of Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA), spoke about building Malaysia’s very own Lighthouse Project comprising multinational corporations that will act as anchors to help guide local players into this new venture.During the webinar, Dato' Azman elaborated about Malaysia’s competitive edge – its diversified economic structure and government support. He said the key to sustaining this competitive edge, however, is that the Malaysian economy must be digitally empowered. The Lighthouse Project is one programme that will help achieve this objective. We are inspired and encouraged by this initiative. As firm believers in connecting and collaborating, SEMI Southeast Asia supports programmes that advance the entire microelectronics ecosystem. We look forward to seeing MIDA drive this project, and we encourage Malaysian E E companies to tap MIDA’s expertise in this field. Ultimately, we are confident that through this initiative and the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies, Malaysia will be repositioned as a top global manufacturing nation. Bee Bee Ng is president of SEMI Southeast Asia.

Olivier Corvez, senior manager of Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability at SEMI, sat down (virtually) with Todd Patterson, vice president of global EHS for Entegris Global Operations, to discuss how Entegris has responded to the global pandemic.Corvez manages and Patterson participates in the COVID-19 EHS Task Force currently meeting weekly to discuss industry response and share best practices. SEMI: Was Entegris prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic? How did the company respond?Patterson: Entegris has a strong risk management framework and a risk assessment team of senior leaders who meet at least once a quarter. This focus gives us early visibility into events that could destabilize our organization or threaten our operations. Such a framework helps ensure we have the information necessary to act as soon as possible when the need arises. However, our business continuity plans for a pandemic of this scale were far less than with other more commonly occurring catastrophic events such as earthquakes or hurricanes. The COVID-19 crisis was clearly unprecedented and as such, the necessary systems and procedures were not in place with the depth and detail needed. Our strong governance structure made it possible for us to hold steady even as the pandemic caused increasing uncertainty and disruption around the world. For example, despite major supply chain shutdowns across many industries, to date, our supply chain and manufacturing operations have only been modestly impacted by COVID-19. Our supply chain team was assessing daily the areas of risk with our suppliers and taking appropriate action as well as preemptive steps to ensure our critical supply lines remained open.Our sales team engaged in regular communications with our customers providing them updates about our Business Continuity Plans and our actions to mitigate the risk to any of their deliveries. In addition, we maintained current information about the continuity of our supply chain on the company’s intranet for the global sales team to access as they engaged with customers. Also, a proactive communication plan was implemented immediately to send weekly video messages from senior executives directly to employees’ emails. It was an effective way to communicate with our global teams, to keep them informed about the status of the company’s operations and maintain a common sense of purpose at a time when many colleagues worked from home. In these weekly messages, we also focused significant attention on the health and safety protocols established to protect our manufacturing and lab employees from the virus.Among the health and safety protocols we implemented immediately as the virus moved across different regions were those related to facility screenings, work-from-home policies, social distancing, self-quarantine requirements, contact tracing, increased disinfecting, and travel restrictions. With approximately 5,300 employees worldwide, we had teams in every region ready to implement these comprehensive protocols. We believe we were among the first companies to implement work-from-home policies and travel restrictions.Temperature screening stations at Entegris facilities in Jangan, Korea (left) and Kulim, Malaysia (right). In addition, our CEO led a COVID-19 Steering Committee comprised of senior executives and managers from operations, human resources and communications. The committee met several times a week during March and April to evaluate and formulate responses to the issues that emerged as the virus spread from region to region. The committee’s work created a strong partnership among senior executives and divisional and functional leaders, and the initial guidelines developed by the committee have formed the backbone of a global playbook to limit the spread of the virus to our other sites around the world.Recently, the committee has changed its focus to more strategic issues such as creating a framework for transitioning remote workers back into our office locations. Meanwhile, local leadership teams at each of our global sites have been empowered to address ongoing tactical issues consistent with our thoroughly documented health and safety protocols.Looking to the future, we are using our experience in responding to COVID-19 to develop a more comprehensive pandemic response plan. We have project teams working on better ways to: measure temperatures of personnel entering our sites facilitate social distancing in the workplace redesign common use areas to reduce the number of high touch points disinfect all spaces thoroughly and regularly, and manage emergency pandemic supplies. SEMI: From the SEMI EHS survey, we noted that all members had a Business Continuity Plan. How effective has it been for deploying resources and adapting quickly and minimizing the crisis? Why or why not? Patterson: Because we have operations in China, Entegris experienced the impact of the virus immediately. We quickly formed two task force teams for our two primary facilities in the region. These teams developed the means for communicating key information to employees and started working on prevention plans to protect employees and comply with local requirements for when operations resumed. They met the challenges head on and found quick solutions. An example was finding an effective way of communicating to the employees for each location. Group chats were established through social media. It was this work that led to their success in getting approvals from local authorities to resume operations. Those plans have laid the groundwork on which our other sites around the world could build their response plans.The effective management of our global supply chain also stands out as a key success of the company’s Business Continuity Plan. Entegris has a highly complex supply chain with approximately 6,500 suppliers and a $850 million annual spend, and we ship work-in-progress and finished goods from over 90 sites globally.As I mentioned earlier, despite the virus crippling supply chains across many industries, Entegris experienced very little disruption to its supply chain. The supply chain team was able to accomplish this despite a 90% reduction in global freight capacity. A key factor in keeping goods flowing to our factories was the intensive work the team had done earlier to develop an in-depth understanding of the company’s top suppliers and to mitigate sourcing risks. They had established alternate sources, balanced the sources geographically, and placed inventory across our supply chain to buffer risk.The team also had integrated statistical modeling into reporting tools, which made it possible to reset safety stocks and logistics lead times quickly as conditions changed. And a supply chain digitalization provided one aligned and integrated view via dashboards, giving the company the ability to respond rapidly and to communicate in real time with our suppliers. We essentially had a virtual war room where we monitored the daily impact of the spread of the virus and could address bottlenecks and other issues immediately.SEMI: What lessons have been learned, so far? How do you see changes in your company’s operations in the future?Patterson: Institutionalizing what we’ve learned has already begun. Whether the measures implemented during the pandemic are temporary or become permanent is still to be determined. Regardless, the learnings need to be documented and available as a playbook for if – or when – the next pandemic occurs.Entegris is already working on a more comprehensive pandemic plan that will be based on five levels of preparedness. Level 0 will cover annual training requirements and management of emergency inventory of pandemic supplies. Level 1 will include early recognition of an outbreak, and then Levels 2-4 will include requirements for when specific response measures are implemented. Entegris also has formed the “New Normal” task force, which consists of leaders representing a number of disciplines directing the project teams previously mentioned to create a more comprehensive pandemic response plan. One of the project teams is working on improving the facility screening process that performs temperature measurement for personnel entering Entegris sites. The team is looking at the best technology to scan body temperature. As to whether this technology is employed only while COVID-19 is still active or becomes a permanent way of doing business, this is still being discussed.SEMI: EHS is involved in both providing technical support to protect individuals but also in making organizational changes to favorize social distancing. Could you explain some of the successes and challenges while tackling these two fronts?Patterson: Very early in the pandemic, Entegris established a work-from-home policy for non-essential employees. This significantly reduced the number of personnel and the potential for contact at the Entegris locations. Significant facility changes also were required. These included the design of facility screening booths and modifications to common gathering areas such as canteens, meeting rooms, prayer rooms, and smoking points. Physical markings were used to designate 2 meters distancing, and the seating in canteens and meeting rooms was reduced and staggered to minimize the risk of exposure to the virus. Entegris also has a project team focused on developing design solutions for offices and workstations when space makes it difficult to maintain 2 meters social distancing. These changes turned out to be essential for some sites in meeting mandates by local authorities. Our sites in Hangzhou, China and Kulim, Malaysia both were allowed to resume partial operations after demonstrating to government authorities the effectiveness of the preventative measures put in place. One particular challenge we are facing is the range of personal differences and awareness levels within the workforce – including those that don’t understand the importance of the new guidelines. We are working closely in advising supervisory staff to be aware of the need for employees to follow all health and safety protocols we have put in place, including social distancing. That preventative measure is the most difficult to make part of our new behavior – it is unnatural and inconsistent with our human nature, but it is critical to preventing the further spread of the virus.SEMI: How do you envision the progressive steps in deescalating to bring back “normal” operations? Patterson: I don’t know whether Entegris will ever go back to the old “normal.” As previously mentioned, we are working on the “New Normal.” Our focus now is on bringing our work-from-home employees back to the workplace without adding risk of exposure to the virus. We are still exploring options, but we expect to do it in a phased approach so that we can adequately assess the preventive measures that are in place and determine whether adjustments need to be made to any of our health and safety protocols.We are starting to see a variety of different frameworks emerge for evaluating repopulation timing and procedures. We will assess them on an office-by-office, or site-by-site basis, utilizing consistent criteria to define the potential for exposure to the virus. This also applies to our field service workforce. However, I have not yet seen any governmental guidance that offers a recommended framework for returning employees to the workplace. I think this represents an opportunity for SEMI EHS and the Standards groups to work to establish that framework for our industry.SEMI: Anything else you would like to share that you have observed throughout this crisis?We have not discussed the challenges faced in procuring and acquiring pandemic supplies. Almost immediately after the outbreak occurred in Wuhan, it became increasingly difficult to find supplies. Even when confirmation was provided by suppliers and delivery dates confirmed, the majority of the dates were pushed out or canceled. We found that what worked best was to have purchasing teams at the local site work with their local contacts on obtaining smaller quantities while a corporate point person was also managing larger orders. In preparation for any future pandemics, Entegris will be maintaining an emergency inventory for masks, sanitizer, thermometers, and disinfectants.For 18 months, Todd Patterson has held the position of VP Global EHS for Entegris Global Operations. His experience with emergency management and BCP has become invaluable in the past three months. He is grateful to his global response teams around the world for coming together to support the Entegris team in this unprecedented situation. Todd is an active participant on the SEMI EHS COVID-19 response teams led by Olivier Corvez at SEMI. Olivier Corvez is senior manager of Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability at SEMI.

On Monday, SEMI led a statement from a coalition of industry groups calling on governments worldwide to harmonize their policies to safely allow essential international travel by essential workers. Cross-border mobility in the semiconductor and microelectronics industry is vital to maintaining manufacturing critical to the production of semiconductor devices that are the foundation of our modern economy, countless economic sectors and each nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Uniform cross-border travel rules impacting essential businesses in the electronics supply chain are crucial for semiconductor business infrastructure and supply chains to maintain effective operations.To that end, SEMI is urging governments around the world to permit international travel by semiconductor supply chain engineers, technicians and executives with minimal disruption to ensure any fast-tracked procedures apply directly to the semiconductor industry and that any agreements negotiated among countries harmonize global travel procedures and processes. Global supply chains require cross-border travel by key technical personnel and business continuity decision-makers to ensure that essential industry manufacturing and business operations remain efficient, effective and uninterrupted. While the industry continues to implement safety protocols and minimize non-essential travel to stem the spread of COVID-19, highly sophisticated equipment sets and materials usage from multiple nations will at times require specialized expertise that is not present in-country.For example, technicians from a semiconductor manufacturing equipment company typically must travel to semiconductor factories in other countries to install or repair specialized tools in situations that are beyond the expertise of the local field office and too complicated to handle by video conference. Similarly, at times semiconductor-based solutions, such as cloud computing, must be implemented or optimized on-site for the equipment to achieve full capacity. After months of remote access to their overseas operations, it also is critical that executives are able to visit their facilities to evaluate and manage their ongoing operations. In the past month, several countries central to the global electronics supply chain have engaged in both formal and informal talks to ease travel restrictions on personnel from essential industries. China, for example, is negotiating fast-track travel protocols with countries throughout Asia and Europe. On May 1, China and South Korea formalized an agreement that has made significant accommodations for semiconductor industry personnel to travel between the two countries. Last week, China and Singapore reached a similar deal – planned to take effect in early June – prioritizing travel for both executives and technicians.Beyond China, several ad-hoc negotiations are underway involving countries as varied as Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Multilateral discussions are also afoot with the aim of setting up bubble travel zones featuring standard health and travel protocols within the country blocs. As these disparate agreements between individual countries or small blocs of countries take shape, however, they are likely to create divergent standards that may complicate efforts of global businesses to effectively service their operations and customers, even if such travel is and has been deemed essential.In March, when U.S. states and many governments around the world began implementing stay-at-home orders and closing non-essential business operations, SEMI immediately took a lead role advocating to ensure that that the entire microelectronics supply chain was deemed essential and able to continue operations. In the U.S., nearly every state followed SEMI’s recommendation to adhere to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) guidelines that included semiconductor manufacturing and its supply chain as essential, or specifically highlighted semiconductor supply chains as essential. Overseas, SEMI advocacy worked to ensure the semiconductor supply chain was deemed essential in every key jurisdiction.The mobility of essential workers is critical to essential business operations in the electronics supply chain. Just as SEMI led the effort to ensure that critical electronics supply chain operations were deemed essential as economies were closing down, SEMI will continue to advocate for uniform essential travel guidelines for critical infrastructure workers as economies reopen. Karl Kailing is manager of Public Policy and Advocacy at SEMI.

By many measures, South Korea is swiftly restoring life as usual after suffering a heavy COVID-19 caseload in March. The region has logged an average of about 10 new COVID-19 cases per day since mid-April, it enjoys an ample supply of facial masks and sanitizer, and the Korean government on May 6 lifted social distancing orders and now encourages routine distancing to keep the coronavirus at bay. South Korea is also making progress on the business front as regions including China, Vietnam, Poland, Hungary and Kuwait have started to crack open the doors for travel by Korean businesspeople. As of mid-May, more than 5,500 Korean workers had received permits to travel to the five nations. For several months, South Korea was subjected to international travel bans to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Then, as its COVID-19 case count dropped, other nations started to loosen their bans on business visits to South Korea. In mid-May, the Korean government won work-related travel privileges to Vietnam for 186 Samsung Display engineers, while some LG engineers were also granted the travel permits.Other steps forward for the Korean microelectronics supply chain include the following: About 1,150 workers from Samsung, LG group and affiliates subject to a 14-day quarantine were granted entry to Vietnam 340 employees from 143 small and midsize Korean companies traveled to Vietnam under a 14-days quarantine 252 LG Group workers won fast-track entry to Nanjing, China 215 Samsung Display, Samsung SDI and Samsung Electro-Mechanics engineers were permitted entry to Tianjin, China under the region’s fast-track program 170 LG Display workers with fast-track privileges flew to Guangzhou, China 300 Samsung Electronics workers arrived in Xian, China via fast track Shanghai, Tianjin, and Shandong are among 10 provinces in China that have implemented the fast-track entry program. South Korea businesspeople are required to follow a number of protocols to help ensure the safety of China’s citizens such as: Submitting to temperature checks at least 14 days before departure and COVID-19 tests within 24 hours of leaving South Korea Showing health certificates that they have tested negative for COVID-19 Undergoing COVID-19 testing once they arrive in China. Workers testing negative for the virus can start work within three days. Other regions are also weighing a loosening of travel restrictions to South Korea. For example, the Japan government is considering issuing business travel permits to 10 countries including Korea, China, and the United States. The start to re-opening international borders to business travel is a promising step toward restoring the global collaboration and connection at the heart of the microelectronics industry. Jaegwan Shim is a marketing specialist at SEMI Korea.

Companies around the world are increasingly turning to mergers and acquisitions, research and development, and corporate venture capital (CVC) investment to sustain growth. For many years, global semiconductor companies including Intel, Qualcomm and Samsung have been active CVC investors. However, the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many venture capital (VC) and CVC investors to rethink their investment strategies as they look to an uncertain future. To help provide SEMI members with the latest market trend information, SEMI Taiwan held the webinar Challenges and Opportunities in Corporate Venturing during the Global Pandemic Crisis on April 28th. Featured speaker James Mawson, founder and editor in chief of Global Corporate Venturing, provided an analysis of the pandemic’s impact on deal flow, capital movement, sentiment and strategies among CVCs. CVC takes larger role in past decadeCorporations have been increasingly active direct and indirect venture investors over the past decade. From 2011-2019, more than US$1.3 trillion of venture capital was invested globally, with corporations accounting for more than half that total, according to data from Pitchbook/GCV Analytics.Semiconductor companies that have been active in corporate venturing include Intel, Samsung, Nvidia, ARM, AMD, SK Hynix, Broadcom and Qualcomm. Pure-play semiconductor and chip companies tend to make few investments in their start-up counterparts because sector saturation of powerful incumbents leaves little opportunity for growth, James said. “While it is hard to find entrepreneurs wanting to be engaged in pure play S C, once they do, they can be very valuable and often be able to bring disruptive forces to the whole ecosystem,” James said.S C corporate investors focus on chip applicationsSemiconductor companies looking beyond pure-play S C start-ups for investment opportunities often target applications or developers that require the additional data, processing power, and memory their chips provide. “There is lots of interest by the big chip companies such as Intel, Qualcomm, and Samsung in developing some of those chip applications, getting them used more and creating a whole ecosystem,” James said.For example, Intel Capital, based on its data-centric theme, has focused on areas like autonomous vehicles, data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) because of the sheer amount of data and processing power they require. In another notable trend, non-traditional S C players such as Apple and Alibaba are leveraging investments in start-ups to develop their own chips for competitive advantage, James said.March deal flow down 20% With COVID-19 slowing the global economy, James expects semiconductor and chip companies to scale back direct investments this year due to rising pressure on their balance sheets. Deal flow in March was down roughly 20% from February.James is hopeful corporates will focus on investing in innovation over the long term rather than target share buybacks to boost near-term earnings. James pointed out that investors can uncover opportunities by identifying future problems to be solved in areas such as quantum computing, biotech, energy, healthcare, communications and ICT. Still, in the near term, where there is a crisis, there is opportunity. While the pandemic hit some sectors hard, it benefits start-ups in industries including gaming, education and telemedicine. This time is different?James said corporates need to rethink the investment model they want to follow. One option is the approach taken by General Electric, which divested its investment team and sold all its portfolio companies last year. Another is to focus on the long term. For example, Intel Capital has been dedicated to investments in innovation for nearly 30 years and continues to invest during downturns.Compared with the internet bubble and global financial crisis, today there are more experienced and mature CVCs that better know how to negotiate a crisis. James also pointed out investors are interested in backing CVCs with sector investing experience. There are now more than 600 CVCs with a 10-year-plus track record.James expects a variety of funding models to emerge over the next decade as pressure on corporate balance sheets encourages corporate investors to consider models that allow third-party capital to effectively leverage their CVC units. Corporate investors are also open to other ways to efficiently deliver financial returns.For more information about the SEMI Taiwan Corporate Growth and Innovation Community, please contact Irene Lin at [email protected]. For GCV’s latest news and event, visit its website.Jo-Ann Su is senior director of the Corporate Growth and Innovation Community at SEMI Taiwan.

In an important step toward resuming business as usual in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on May 14 lifted the state of emergency originally scheduled to expire at the end of May for 39 of Japan’s 47 prefectures, marking “the real beginning of our efforts toward a new normal in the era of the coronavirus” as new cases continue to decline. But with Tokyo, Osaka and six other prefectures still under the state of emergency, Abe urged citizens to remain cautious as the nation and world continue to confront the COVID-19 threat. Among criteria the remaining prefectures must meet for a state of emergency suspension is a reduction in new infections to no more than 0.5 cases weekly for every 100,000 citizens. The eight prefectures account for nearly half of Japan’s population and GDP, with Tokyo and Osaka the two largest urban areas in the island nation. Japan expects to contain its economic losses to 38 trillion yen, 15 percent less than the 45 trillion yen hit originally projected. The Japan government has planned a May 21 progress review[1] in the eight prefectures, a timeline that Abe said could lead to the lifting of the state of emergency before the original cutoff at the end of the month, a move that would help stem the drain on the domestic economy.Strict Immigration Controls Restricts International Travel to and from Japan by Supplier EngineersAs I reported on April 21, the Japan Foreign Ministry on March 31 raised its travel advisory to level 3 for 49 regions around the world including the U.S., prohibiting travel from Japan for any purpose. SEMI Japan is urging government officials to exempt Japanese supply chain engineers from the travel ban to allow visits to semiconductor manufacturing facilities in those regions in order to install, start up and service equipment.Starting May 14, Japan blocked immigration of foreign nationals and permanent residents from 100 countries and regions worldwide, a ban applying to anyone who spent time in their home region within 14 days of their planned arrival in Japan. The areas include China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan in Asia; Canada and the U.S.; and Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.K. in Europe. For the complete list, see the Japan Ministry of Justice’s website.Japan’s immigration ban mirrors restrictions now in place in many other regions around the world. The immigration controls are well-intended – to restrict the spread of COVID-19 – but hamstring the global microelectronics supply chain. For example, the curbs bar engineers from international travel to install new tools and software in fabs. SEMI Japan has stressed the potential chip industry impacts of the ban in ongoing talks with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and is facilitating discussions between government representatives and SEMI members to help clear the way for travel by critical supply chain workers to Japan. SEMI Supports Members with COVID-19 ResourcesSEMI international headquarters and regional offices are here to help you, our members. For more information on our webinars, surveys, best practices and other information designed to help you meet the challenges of the pandemic, please visit the SEMI Coronavirus Updates Resources page.[1] The May 21 review found three prefectures in western area – Hyogo, Kyoto and Osaka – met the criteria to lift the state of the emergency. Four other prefectures – Chiba, Hokkaido, Saitama and Tokyo – remain under the emergency order that will be reviewed again as early as May 25.Jim Hamajima is president of SEMI Japan.

What do you do when much of the U.S. is under lockdown and university students want insights into career opportunities in the microelectronics industry including how to secure jobs?Go virtual.More than 100 students from 30 universities hopped online recently to attend Find Your Future in Microelectronics, the SEMI Foundation’s first webinar. The students learned about the industry’s impact on the future of tech and available career paths and discovered how to take advantage of the Foundation’s university programs. They also submitted their resumes as part of joining SEMI’s student fellow network in hopes of engaging with employers and exploring available job opportunities.And if the students’ questions were a telling sign of their engagement, the event showed that they were fully tuned in. Tim Brosnihan, executive director of the MEMS Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), Erika Hansen, an Applied Materials process engineer, and Cristina Sandoval, the event coordinator and moderator, fielded a whopping 65 questions, many of them about job opportunities, career paths and suggested courses of study. A sample of the questions asked: Q: Is the industry still hiring during these uncertain times?A: Yes! The microelectronics industry is growing and will continue to grow over the next 10 years. There are many job opportunities to be had in the industry and many of our member companies are hiring.Q: What kind of degrees does the microelectronics industry look for?A: Generally, the industry primarily hires graduates with STEM degrees. Chemical, electrical, nano, mechanical, and materials engineering are some of the top majors the industry hires from along with chemistry, physics, and mathematic degrees. That being said, the industry needs talent from all majors. That includes business, finance, human resources and marketing.Q: How can I get connected to the opportunities provided by SEMI?A: You can sign up to connect to our employers and opportunities at www.semi.org/join-edu. Once you submit your information, you will be kept up to date on the latest events and opportunities offered by SEMI and our member companies.Q: Any advice on what to do if your offer has been rescinded?A: Don’t limit yourself when it comes to opportunities. If your offer has been rescinded, don’t give up! Share your situation with your LinkedIn network, an invaluable resource full of contacts that can help you learn about job opportunities. You never know what you will love once you enter the workforce, so keep yourself open and don’t limit the positions or fields that you interview for. Rescinding an offer is always a very difficult decision for an organization, so make sure that you exit the relationship positively. You never know who you will cross paths in the future.Erika delved into the day in the life of an engineer and advised students on ways to find jobs in our industry. Students interacted with Erika, eager to learn how she balanced customer needs with working in the lab. She said she enjoys that duality because it continues to challenge her, allowing her to grow her abilities as a professional.When it comes to breaking into the industry, working in college or through internships and direct-hire opportunities after graduating are good ways to do so. And the students can get their feet in the door with degrees at various levels and across a wide range of disciplines. There is no set formula for success. Learners, she said, will find a place in the industry.With workforce development a key industry initiative, the SEMI Foundation will be rolling out more virtual programs and events to help keep university students and the microelectronics industry connected. Look for details on a virtual job fair we’re planning.We look forward to seeing you online!Shari Liss is executive director of the SEMI Foundation. Shari can be reached at [email protected].

Cameron Burks, head of Global Security, Enterprise Business Resiliency and Health, Environment Safety with Adobe Systems, and a member of the White House Task Force for COVID-19 response, briefed members of SEMI’s IT Leadership (ITL) and Environment, Health Safety (EHS) groups on April 20, 2020, on enterprise resiliency principals specific to the current COVID-19 crisis. Burks has spent over 20 years in the global security, crisis management and business continuity fields for public and private global companies. In the meeting, he noted, “This is all new. No one has had to respond to a crisis of this magnitude and impact. Ever.” On top of all of the learning and responding that teams are doing in real-time, it is helpful to have a strong business continuity plan (BCP). The following is a recap of insights that Burks shared on best practices for business continuity with examples from Adobe’s BCP.The Long-Term Picture: How to Plan for Business ContinuityBurks emphasized that the first step in any crisis is identifying risks and ensuring the safety of all human life. Once human safety is assured, the next part of the plan must form a strong foundation for escalation, operation evaluation and response. A solid foundation also creates the business factors to restart operations efficiently. The foundation of the Adobe pandemic plan was laid during the summer of 2019 while the global team was updating their infectious disease plan and rehearsing with headquarters and regional offices. That plan includes six main sections:1. Crisis Management Plans – escalation, roles and responsibilities, team operations2. Crisis Communication Plans – internal and external stakeholder communications3. Incident Management Plans – site or regional management response4. Emergency Response Plans – immediate local response to events5. Business Recovery Plans – business and facility recovery6. Disaster Recovery Plans – IT and technology recoveryThis format has worked and scaled well over the past few months, and the company is now in the stage of evaluating how to help offices recover and repopulate. Response Team Structure – Global and LocalAlthough it is critical to have plans and leadership coming from headquarters when it comes to a crisis, LOCAL teams are on the front lines since most crises start and evolve quickly. In the planning process, the local teams need to know and be trained on plans for a wide range of incidents and events including: People- and product-related Security – both external and internal Operational (e.g. cyberattacks) Natural disasters Health-related, such as this pandemic The severity of the event will determine the corporate impact and activation of appropriate plans. Low-impact events include those where stability is quickly reached and response plans have effectively contained the incident. High-level events will cause severe disruption for employees and customers and require an efficient and coordinated response. Regardless of the severity level of the event, all response teams need to be prepared to quickly activate and then to thoroughly coordinate on crisis management and communications. It is critical to have established actions to implement based on the severity level of an event. Table 1 provides an example of Key Trigger Levels for implementing specific actions depending on the severity of an event. Table 1 – Key Trigger Levels X = phase to consider first implementing controls The team needs to understand what the staff requires to maintain business continuity. Burks recommended aligning with ISO 22301, the Business Continuity standard. The standard will lead a company to understand what redundancies need to be in place to keep essential operations running. In Adobe’s case, this includes keeping data centers running and providing essential gear to the 90+ members of the response and global security teams. Adobe tests the plans every month and addresses the bugs – every time.Repopulating Business Facilities During COVID-19 While COVID-19 infection and death rates are currently flattening in many locations, there remain a significant number of new infections, limiting the ability to repopulate business facilities without threatening the health of the workforce and their families. Adobe is using multiple indicators to calculate when the virus is contained, the threat is reduced, and employees can return to workplaces. For now, Burks recommended maintaining social distancing as much as possible while keeping operations running. He believes summer may see some abatement due to weather. However, most experts expect to stay hyper-aware and responsive well into 2021.Although Adobe tries to provide actual dates for return to their employees – and did early on with best estimates – they have had to change to a “until further notice” statement. Repopulating is going to be much more complicated than the original decisions to work from home. The Adobe operations team is providing much larger conference rooms, enhanced cleaning regimens, and new norms of interacting at the workplace for everyone. The goal is to bring people back in small groups on a site-by-site basis. The first group will be only 7-10% of the workforce. That group includes the cleaning and facilities crews to support the professional staff, who would return to reap the benefits of a collaborative environment. Many people want to come back to the office. They are suffering in isolation, and productivity is dropping in those cases.Adobe is planning to create a manual on interacting at the workplace and will require training and adherence to new social constructs. Security officers will be “ambassadors,” helping the workforce remember and adhere to the new rules. The company will use footprint stickers to provide visual clues to employees on walking single file and avoiding groups. Stickers will designate desks that can and cannot be used. To provide a more open office plan, they will remove desks and arrange movable white boards to accommodate the collaboration employees want.The situation is complex and dynamic and requires decision-making based on a definitive set of criteria. The following is a summary of information that Burks shared on Adobe’s criteria for returning to work after COVID-19: Indication of health and safety assurance utilizing risk assessment criteria – locally assessed and qualified for a minimum of six weeks. Travel prohibitions and local/external meeting guidelines to be modeled separately utilizing case-by-case risk assessment criteria. Assessment of the case fatality rate, infection peak and downside projections – curve must be flat. Management team decision on how much risk to assume, as this disease is durable Assessment of infection vector and prevalence vis-à-vis relaxation of nonpharmaceutical interventions; assessment of local healthcare capacity Government shelter-in-place restrictions fully (or partially) lifted; declarations by public leaders that the virus has been contained at some level (city, state, country) Assessment of facilities to physically distance employees and/or staggered shift schedule; assessment of security capability/resource availability Assessment of public transportation and infrastructure, including parking garage Assessment of school closures, childcare and/or adult-care Assessment of nonpharmaceutical intervention awareness campaign, medical surveillance program, and/or onsite medical or clinical support No visitor program until approved by global security staff when office repopulation program begins. Create exceptions list. Emergency plans formally in place Site capacity identified; Emergency Response Team (ERT) skeleton crew part of the repopulation Full plan in place to close offices for a period of no less than three weeks if one employee or vendor tested positive for COVID-19 during repopulation exercise; plan includes informing workforce within “return population” of circumstance and having the facilities team execute a deep clean. The plan would then activate communications for the crisis management remediation phase, which includes full workforce transparency via town halls, webinars, emails, etc. Burks noted that contact tracing has moved from an unthinkable invasion of privacy to a likelihood for most workplaces, taking into consideration privacy laws predominant in Europe and U.S. If anyone falls ill or tests positive for the virus, they will automatically be sent home and everyone who has been in contact with them will need to enter a 14-day quarantine before returning. Burks’ presentation, and his thoughtful approach to planning and the current situation with COVID-19, allowed the attendees to consider their positions and paths for bringing their workers back to the offices and facilities. A lively question and answer session enabled members to further clarify points and get immediate feedback on their plans and strategies. Burks finished with a request to industry members to continue the dialogue and send industry data for him to report back to the White House Task Force. For additional resources from SEMI, visit our COVID-19 response website, which provides best practices and the opportunity to submit company stories.About the AuthorHeidi Hoffman is Senior Director of Corporate Marketing for SEMI. She is currently serving on the SEMI COVID-19 Response Team, coordinating multiple inputs from across the industry to assist all SEMI members in responding to the crisis. To submit your company response story, visit our COVID-19 News and Blogs webpage and scroll down to the green submit bar below the news.

In much of post-lockdown China, urban life is humming. The streets of Beijing and Shanghai are bustling with traffic, smog again shrouds city skylines with the resurgence of economic activity, property sales are bouncing back and a revival in consumer confidence is taking hold. Emerging from monthslong shelter-in-place orders, the nation has seized a large measure of control in containing COVID-19 as it breaks fertile new ground in pandemic response and recovery. In Wuhan, Hubei, the fountainhead of the novel coronavirus, one company offers a striking example of China’s muscular COVID-19 containment efforts, carefully continuing to operate through January and February as the virus set root, said Karel Eloot, a Shenzhen-based senior partner and Asia leader of Transformation and Operations practices at McKinsey Company, speaking at a recent webinar presented with SEMI. Soon, COVID-19 spread to eight other provinces that suffered serious outbreaks and forced the nationwide lockdown that sent China’s GDP plunging 7 percent, its first contraction in 28 years. An impressive array of safety protocols, many designed to reduce people density as a bulwark against the virus, animates China’s fight against COVID-19, a return-to-work movement that is laying a path forward for companies around the world. It is these measures, Eloot said, that have kept the Wuhan company afloat and helped other businesses across China restore operations with unusual speed. Community and Social Distancing – The Heart of China’s COVID-19 Response In establishing safeguards, many companies started by assessing staffing requirements, identifying workers essential to sustaining on-site operations while allowing others, such as white-collar staff, to work from home, though some have since returned to their offices. Seen as non-essential, some factory maintenance workers have been instructed to stay home. To fill staffing gaps, business have turned to multi-skilling practices, such as having on-site supervisors and engineers step out of their daily roles to handle lower-level operations activities. Much of the focus has been on community distancing, with businesses quickly identifying workers suffering even minor COVID-19 symptoms and using contact tracing to prevent sick or vulnerable employees from entering offices and factories and turning them into hot zones for community spread, Eloot said. Manufacturing facilities are staggering work shifts to reduce people density, closely monitoring workers’ body temperatures with an eye toward other symptoms, and following up with medical tests and quarantines as needs dictates. QR codes, long a staple of e-commerce, have been a particularly effective weapon in combatting COVID-19. Companies are deployed the scanning technology to identify workers by color code – green, yellow or red – and assign various levels of site access depending on who they’ve been in contact with. Some factory workstations are now walled off by transparent plastic sheeting to prevent COVID-19 infection through aerosol drift. In business meetings and lunchrooms, staffers sit spaced a safe distance apart and facing the same direction to avoid crosscurrents of the microscopic respiratory droplets that can carry the virus. Others eat in isolation. Meeting room windows are opened, weather permitting, to admit fresh air. And elevators – perfect petri dishes for contagion – are shuttered to ward off human clusters, shifting all floor-to-floor movement to staircases. Companies united by the common goal to keep goods flowing through supply chains are providing masks and other personal protective devices to smaller players most vulnerable to the economic shock of COVID-19. The aim: Shield the companies from the potentially crippling effects of the virus to avoid supply chain breakdowns that can undercut the performance of the whole. Even competitors have formed unexpected alliances, sharing parts and components that are in short supply. “Some sectors have maintained steady production throughout the crisis” thanks to these practices, Eloot said. “China has been able to create safe communities where people can operate as normal.” Executive Uncertainty Reigns, Hope Springs Eternal with Innovation The objective of China’s fast, forceful response to the COVID-19 outbreak is economic: A V-shaped rebound after the 7 percent wallop to its GDP in the first quarter of the year. The trajectory is among nine economic recovery scenarios McKinsey Company presented to more than 2,000 executives worldwide in a recent survey seeking their views on the likelihood of each. The business leaders coalesced around two – a full restoration of global GDP growth that could materialize this year or extend into next, or a two- to three-year recovery following the initial economic tsunami, Sven Smit, an Amsterdam-based senior partner with McKinsey and global leader of the McKinsey Global Institute and global COVID-19 response team, said at the webinar. The executives see the multi-year recovery as the most likely. The shorter rebound ranked second on a scale of probabilities. Notably, the business leaders found the V-shaped bounceback China is attempting – returning to GDP growth in one quarter – the least likely outcome. But the biggest surprise from the survey, Smit said, was executives’ view that of the two major global interventions for restoring GDP growth – viral and economic – one will be ineffective, reflecting their deep uncertainty about what lies ahead. A growing body of knowledge about COVID-19 tempers that doubt. It’s established fact that the virus is highly contagious, more lethal than the flu, and spread by means including aerosols and touching contaminated surfaces. But only recently has more insight emerged about human immunity. Broad-based blood testing in the Netherlands has discovered that only 3 percent to 4 percent of the people screened are immune to the coronavirus, leaving the vast majority of the population without natural biological protection – a sweeping vulnerability evident in Asian countries hit early by the virus only to see fresh flare-ups after initial containment. Smit warned of the pandemic’s potential resurgence. Testing has revealed that coronavirus cases are underreported by a staggering 10- to 15-fold, a clarion call that countries “need to be very careful about how they re-open economies.” That means in order to keep COVID-19 at bay until a vaccine is developed, the best defenses will remain temperature monitoring, contact tracing, quarantining, social distancing, mask wearing, frequent hand-washing and other proven protective measures. And while the relative contribution of each safeguard to slowing COVID-19’s spread is unknown, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan and other Asian countries have shown that “if you apply them all, you are likely to keep this virus under control,” Smit said. It remains to be seen whether protections the U.S. and European countries have put in place will stave off the virus as effectively as the rigorous measures implemented by Asian countries and, if the Western regions deploy a different cocktail of safety protocols, how well they will work. The re-opening of their economies promises to reveal the answers – and the McKinsey recovery scenario they’ll face. These and other open questions help explain the uncertainty of the executives McKinsey polled. Pandemic Supercharges, Adds New Urgency to Long-Term Trends What is known is that, far from upending the way all organizations operate, COVID-19 is supercharging secular trends and showing that people can react with dizzying velocity when confronting global mortal threats. That speed, Smit said, “is not determined by the potential of technology, but by events." For decades, doctors and technologists have teamed to develop ways to examine and treat people from afar, yet telemedicine managed to eke out only small, incremental gains in adoption. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, patients have flocked online, with virtual doctor’s visits accounting for more than 70 percent of all physician-patient interactions. “People like it, and we can reach many more patients as a result. It happened in a few weeks,” Smit said. Similarly, teachers and unions have only inched toward digital communications for years, fearing job losses in education at the hands of technology. When schools closed recently under shelter-in-place orders, teachers quickly switched to online lessons. The transition, Smit said, took one weekend. Meanwhile, as office workers holed up at home, usage of teleconferencing applications skyrocketed. “We’re collectively learning at unprecedented speed,” Smit said. “We’re sharing. We’re learning about supply chains. We’re learning about collaboration. We’re learning about masks. We’re learning about contact tracing. We’re learning how to work more efficiently. We’re learning from real-time data about the behavior of people. And we’re investing collectively enormous sums in finding cures and treatments and expanding hospital capacity.” While the coronavirus’s blistering spread caught many countries off-guard, Smit expects scientists to spare no effort to innovate. Expressing hope that new medical interventions will be available by summer, Smit said the world needs to buttress its key lines of defense against the coronavirus until a vaccine is developed – a shield that will quicken the global economic recovery. “The race is on," he said. Related blog COVID-19: Economic and Microelectronics Industry Impacts – Insights from McKinsey Company For McKinsey’s latest insights on the coronavirus pandemic, visit its website, which is updated daily. For the latest COVID-19 information and SEMI event updates SEMI is providing members, visit Coronavirus Resources. Michael Hall is a marketing communications manager at SEMI.

For five days in the latter half of March, the pall of the heavy human and economic toll COVID-19 has exacted in China appeared to be lifting. The epicenter of Wuhan reported no new coronavirus infections through domestic transmission. And in an initial step to loosen its nationwide lockdown, China began reversing restrictions on travel within its borders.Now, in another sign of progress, the region’s idled factory workforce is preparing to return to the production lines. Outside of Hubei province, home to Wuhan, most manufacturing workers are expected to be back on the job by the end of this month, with the proportion of manufacturing employees returning to work in Hubei cities except Wuhan reaching 70 percent by then, said Didier Chenneveau, Partner, Supply Chain Practice, McKinsey Company, in a late-March webinar presented by the business consultancy and SEMI.McKinsey is also “seeing evidence of a rebound in demand led by China’s online sales” as rising consumer confidence and a surge in the popularity of work-from-home policies spur strong spending on laptop computers, Chenneveau said.The turnaround stands in stark contrast to the unprecedented drop in demand McKinsey saw across retail and durable goods in China early in the year. Over the first two months, passenger car sales plunged 90 percent, smart phone receipts 40 percent and retail sales 21 percent, leading to what Chenneveau calls a whiplash effect that could disrupt supply chains as manufacturers and shipping companies scramble to meet pent-up demand once a recovery takes hold. As the outlook for China’s factories and suppliers brightens, concerns are shifting to the ripple effect of its deep manufacturing pullback on demand for goods in the United States and Europe. Sharp disruptions to global supply chains caused by labor shortages and knotty logistics challenges have also become worrisome. And while China is buoyed by the prospect of normalizing its workforce and manufacturing capabilities, parts shortages are bottlenecking production. In the United States and Europe, where 60 percent of air freight is carried in cargo holds of passenger aircraft, logistics concerns loom large with the widespread flight groundings. “Logistics must be a priority in any crisis war room because it’s a big challenge,” Chenneveau said.Asia Semiconductor Supply Chain ImpactsIn Asia, the semiconductor supply chain is working to overcome intractable challenges caused by COVID-19 including sourcing raw materials for chip manufacturing and maintaining assembly and test operations, Mark Patel, Sr. Partner Semiconductor Practice Lead, McKinsey Company, said at the webinar. Those problems cascade to foundries and IDMs even as they confront the compounding issue of a shortage of fab operators and engineers. Downstream, the inability to package, test and qualify products risks exacerbating the supply constraints.Patel said another acute challenge is that most semiconductor manufacturers and suppliers are operating under restricted practices, making it harder to sustain engineering activities vital to new product introductions, new process development and capital equipment expansion. In the longer term, the supply chain fallout hold implications for product life cycles and investments in capacity and next-generation technology – factors that analysts will need to monitor in evaluating the economic impact.Returning Workers Key to Economic RecoveryIssuing shelter-in-place orders have been an effective antidote to the spread of COVID-19 but a double-edged sword as nations worldwide sustain the economic blowback. Discretionary consumer spending on items such as automobiles has dropped by 45 percent globally so far this year, business investment has fallen and trade has seen a sharp slowdown, said Sven Smit, Chairman and Director at the McKinsey Global Institute, speaking at the webinar.A lockdown for as little as a month can slash aggregate global GDP by as much as 10 percent, a scenario McKinsey expects to play out in the second quarter of 2020. The drop would be the deepest since World War II and larger than the plunge in the first quarter of the Great Depression, raising the question of how long governments can afford to keep workers holed up at home.“The economic shock is unprecedented,” Smit said. “We’ve never sent people home to not work. Even in World War II, next to the front lines, people were harvesting food.”China offers a potential blueprint for economic recovery. McKinsey estimates that China’s rigorous containment efforts could help its economy bounce back in as little as six months – a V-shaped rebound. Western nations generally have not been as forceful with their containment measures. For them, the fight against the pathogen could be prolonged, deepening the economic damage.Yet even with the best protective lockdowns, a new challenge arises: The longer shelter-in-place orders remain in effect to contain the spread of the virus, the longer the economic impact drags on. “Until the path to return to work becomes clearer, people will not be confident to spend,” Smit said.Confronted with that reality, governments worldwide must strike the delicate balance between safeguarding the lives of people – critical forces of economic growth through consumer spending – and limiting the economic shock. The faster the virus can be brought to heel, the softer the impact to economies around the world. And the stronger the return-to-work protocols in place once COVID-19 has been brought under control, the faster workers can get back to their jobs. Smit believes resolving both issues simultaneously is not only possible but necessary for a return to normalcy.“That’s the imperative of our time,” he said. Related blog COVID-19: The Way Forward – Insights from McKinsey Company For McKinsey’s latest insights on the coronavirus pandemic, visit its website, which is updated daily.For the latest COVID-19 information and SEMI event updates SEMI is providing members, visit Coronavirus Resources.Michael Hall is a marketing communications manager at SEMI.