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Supplement
| HBS Case Collection
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2009
The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (CW)
by
Willy C. Shih
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Abstract
When L.C. Tu receives an emergency order, he is confronted with a range of production scheduling choices, each of which has unique costs and trade-offs. The case was designed to help students understand job-shop style production and the impact of disruptions and reactive scheduling. Students use two of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's mainstream processes as a vehicle for analysis. The case describes a real situation in which upper management accepts an emergency order. By working through the impact on the production system, students should develop a feel for how shifting demand in a large factory that is structured as a job shop alters the demands on, and utilization rates of expensive capital equipment in a complex way. As bottlenecks shift, students can explore several alternatives, each with different costs and trade-offs. Students may also reflect on the true cost of providing the extraordinary service, and whether management properly takes the impact on operations into account when it makes customer commitments.
Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants;
Disruption;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Cost;
Cost Management;
Business or Company Management;
Time Management;
Network Effects;
Production;
Hardware;
Manufacturing Industry;
Semiconductor Industry;
Taiwan;