Customer linking: A Motorola/Du Pont Photomasks supply chain assessment

Customer Linking, also known as Supply Chain Assessment, provides the opportunity to evaluate the entire supply chain, from the customer's needs through delivery and follow up of the final product. This type of assessment identifies imperfections that add unnecessary cost and cycle time to the entire supply chain. By eliminating redundant steps or redesigning steps to improve efficiencies, cost and cycle time can be reduced. Most supply chain assessment activities are internal. That is, they infrequently extend past the boundaries of a manufacturing or service organization. In order to fully understand what opportunities exist, it is key to look "outside the box" at each customer/supplier interface throughout the entire chain. For example, Du Pont Photomasks and Motorola are both suppliers and customers to each other, as far as flow of information and products are concerned. Motorola design groups supply circuit data to Du Pont Photomasks and Du Pont Photomasks supplies photomasks containing the circuit data images to Motorola fabs. As part of Du Pont Photomasks' re-engineering activities, a Customer Linking exercise was conducted with Motorola in December of 1993. This exercise attempted to examine the flow of information and products from Motorola's High Performance Embedded Systems Division in Oak Hill, TX, through Du Pont Photomasks' mask facilities and into Motorola's MOS-8 wafer fab in Austin, TX. This paper will share the procedures, results and findings of this assessment to illustrate the extreme need for improved customer/supplier relationships in critical path situations within the semiconductor industry.