Power semiconductor suppliers face supply chain and technical challenges

Although power semiconductor products has been in response to WEEE and RoHS made progress, but for the whole industry, the influence of two law brought to remains elusive. Some of the new challenges remain, including the local production line transfer, the establishment of a new supply chain system, and the integration of system integrators. In addition, even if these problems have been resolved, the manufacturers can not sit back and relax, because the new challenges are coming, such as power supply technology inflection point (Inflection point).

It is well known that the two laws have little effect on the design engineer of the system integrators, but they have put forward new requirements for the production method. Sustained efforts have welcomed the changes, such as the data from the semiconductor on display, the company has 95% production lines to achieve the transfer of related processes. However happy seems a bit early, the supplier then found themselves in such an embarrassing situation: because the relevant laws in the field of automotive electronics, telecommunications equipment and the effective date is a period of time, which leads to the old production line still exists.

The continuous improvement of the requirements of the manufacturer makes the development of power semiconductor technology to an inflection point. As well as supply chain. Customer response delays and legal constraints are inconsistent with one of the most common situations in which a customer has two lead and lead free products. A Morimi, senior vice president and general manager of power supply products Peter Green pointed out that this is a big challenge for semiconductor manufacturers. "There are more than 30 billion shipments per year," Peter Green said. "It is conceivable that the above questions will be urgent for the whole supply chain management."

However, these issues are not the most important. Green believes that due to the mixing of demand (a customer need at the same time leaded to unleaded two products) are enabling customers to encounter difficulties in making predictions on the product demand, which requires suppliers to work closely with customers to help them maintain the balance of supply. "It's pretty tricky." He said, because the situation is varied. If it is a direct way to deal with problems is relatively easy, the problem is a lot of customers are to obtain products through distributors or other channels, as we get in this supply information brings many uncertainties."

A Morimi semiconductor is working to build a fully integrated supply chain system in the background to deal with the problem of supply balance. Green pointed out: "if the customer needs the latest products, we can provide products that do not contain lead, but it has no effect." On the supply side, A Morimi realized that it was important to maintain a close relationship with all aspects of the supply chain as much as possible. As mentioned earlier, we have more than 30 billion shipments per year, involving more than 25000 kinds of product lines." "The use of advanced software management systems will help solve the problem," Green said." In addition, the company for some large customers with special support services, such as daily contact with the purchasing department to update the data. The company also set up a dedicated network system, the supply and demand sides can share the database online. In addition, we have set up a JIT warehouse, which is a special item about inventory." Green said.

Green believes in the advanced nature of A Morimi's supply chain system. "I don't have a more efficient system than this." He is proud to say that the company will be able to find a shortage or surplus in the supply chain until the customer is aware of the problem. "It's very valuable to customers." He said. In addition, he also stressed that the development of the supply chain system can not only save operation cost, more important is to customers in the continuous production, increase the yield of the active role, which is especially important in Chinese market.

Power semiconductor technology may be facing a turning point. "The complexity of the power management scheme is constantly improving." Green explains, "so one day the current solution will not be able to meet the requirements of power management." In PC, for example, on the one hand, the frequency of CPU is rising, on the other hand, the current and voltage are constantly reduced. The alternative, regardless of fan or liquid cooling, will lead to a substantial increase in costs, reduced efficiency. The rise of CPU energy consumption makes the power management scheme more and more expensive. This applies to PC, mobile phones, laptops, portable players, and other platforms.

Green believes that the inflection point will come in 2007 or some time later. He said that A Morimi has been with the PC platform architecture, system integrators and mobile phone business integrators develop new power management scheme to deal with when possible difficulties, it will likely be a revolutionary program. In addition, although he refused to disclose the specific product planning, but Green still emphasizes the first need to solve is notebook computer problems and challenges, this implies that the company may be the first launch will be the new power management scheme based on such a platform.

Focus on the Chinese market. Currently, A Morimi in China, both HUAWEI, ZTE, TCL, Haier and other local customers, including apple, Intel, IBM and other multinational companies in China ODM partner. Green said that A Morimi's distribution model is quite flexible. "In fact, we are selling in the Chinese market