Investment & Expansion
the Malaysian island of Penang. The location will include a research and
development centre, design and metrology labs, and manufacturing lines of
test and measurement instruments and semiconductor products. Nearly 40% of
Agilents total orders and revenue originate in the Asia Pacific market.
This comes against a background where Agilent is to reduce its workforce by
a further 4000 people in the next few months. The semiconductor equipment
and test and measurement businesses have seen particularly weak performance,
according to the company.
Fairchild Semiconductor reports that the first phase of its 72,000m2
assembly, test and warehouse facility in Suzhou, China, is on schedule to be
completed by Q2 2003. Phase one consists of a 36,000m2 assembly, test and
automated warehouse facility. Phase two will add a further 36,000m2 and is
due to be built in the next few years.
Qualification runs are underway, and more than 250 employees are being
trained to bring the plant into production quickly. Fairchild expects to
save as much as 30% on assembly and test costs with the new facility. The
facility is designed to produce Fairchilds power, discrete, logic and
analogue products for both the local China market and for export to the rest
of Asia, Europe and the Americas. The move will reduce the amount of
outsourced assembly and test production required by Fairchild.
US cleanroom environment supplier Daw Technologies and its sister company
Daw Process Systems have opened a new office in South Wales, UK.
John Langan, Daw Process Systems general manager, explained: "The office
will represent both Daw Technologies, who build and design cleanrooms and
other ultra clean manufacturing environments and its sister company, Daw
Process Systems, who specialise in the provision of services to such
environments."
Daw works with companies such as International Rectifier, IQE and Trikon. IR
recently acquired the Newport-based semiconductor facility of ESM.
The TSMC foundry service was the first Taiwan company to receive approval
from its national government to invest in a 200mm fab sited in mainland
China. TSMC applied for the $898mn investment in September 2002. The
decision is opposed by one of the parties - the Taiwan Solidarity Union - in
the countrys minority government coalition. A second stage to the approval
requires mass production status at TSMCs 300mm facility in Taiwan. Output
is currently at 5000 wafers/month. This is expected to rise to 10,000 in Q2.
"Mass production" has yet to be defined.
