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Researchers continue to seek understanding of industrialization as a state managed process. How to create and implement new industries based on advanced knowledge is on the policy agenda of many advanced nations. Measures that promote these developments include national capacity building in science and technology, the formation of technology transfer systems, and the establishment of industrial clusters. What these templates often overlook is an analysis of use. This chapter aims to increase the understanding of the processes that embed new solutions in structures from an industrial network perspective. The chapter describes an empirical study of high-technology industrialization in Taiwan that the researcher conducts to this end. The study shows that the Taiwanese industrial model is oversimplified and omits several important factors in the development of new industries. This study bases its findings on the notions that resource combination occurs in different time and space, the new always builds on existing resource structures, and the users are important as active participants in development processes.

To determine the status of internet and e‐commerce adoption by the Taiwan semiconductor industry, the research is designed to help government and enterprise in formulating strategic plans and making resource allocation decisions.

Using the three‐level model of internet commerce adoption (MICA), a survey of 287 companies and web sites was designed. Semiconductor firms were placed into five categories: integrated circuit (IC) design, manufacturing, packaging, IC testing, and peripheral device manufacturing.

The MICA model shows the internet adoption ratio for semiconductor firms as 82.6 percent, significantly higher than the electronics and electrical machinery industry sector (56.5 percent). The IC manufacturing and packaging segment are in the processing stage, the final stage of development for the MICA model. One‐third of the IC testing industry segment falls into the provision stage, and 36.1 percent web sites are in the processing stage. The IC design and peripherals industrial segments are located in the provision stage.

The IC manufacturing segment is conducting more financial transactions than the other segments – a result that matches earlier research showing that larger companies are most likely to implement e‐business applications. Many enterprises in the industry are lagging with the adoption of the internet indicating a need for education and training.

This benchmark study provides a framework for evaluating the internet adoption status of semiconductor and other high technology firms. The MICA model is demonstrated to be suitable for evaluating the different stages of internet adoption.

This paper explores the possible future business environment, industrial structure, technological transformation, and market for the semiconductor industry in Taiwan.

This study applies the Delphi method to predict future trends in Taiwan's semiconductor industry in 2015.

The significant findings are as follows: the future business environment will focus on “industrial internationalization” and “strategic alliance”, and roughly half of Taiwan's production will move to China by 2015; the disintegrated model in Taiwan's semiconductor industry will still remain by 2015 and will require some adjustments, whereas the foundry service in Taiwan will retain its dominance globally; future core technologies in 2015 will comprise low voltage manufacturing (CMOS), High K, nanotechnology processes, and copper interconnection processes; the estimated value of IC industrial production for 2005 was US$32.1 billion, and will be US$61.0 billion in 2010 and US$108.8 billion in 2015.

This research can be utilized as a reference for government, academics, industry, and international investors.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan, which is the main economic life‐line in Taiwan. Operational performance is normally deemed as a key factor in industry. The importance of this issue can be measured through performance indices to observe the operational performance of Taiwan's semiconductor industry.

A combination of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the balanced scorecard (BSC) was employed

This study finds that the efficiency of every domestic semiconductor manufacturer is generally good, and concerning the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard, the most important for the domestic firm is the financial perspective, second is the internal process perspective, third the learning and innovation perspective, and most unimportantly customer perspective.

Owing to the difficulties in data collection and the widespread ranges of the four major aspects, the application of the indices is limited in this paper. Therefore, the main suggestion of this study regarding future research directions is to expand the indices of the four aspects, in the hope of measuring the operating efficiency of enterprises in each aspect using more and improved indices.

This application can be extended by the usage of the ratio analysis and the BSC method to enhance the validity of the DEA.

When implementing DEA, traditional financial indices cannot obtain an in‐depth understanding of an enterprise, hence this study considers the four major constructs of the balanced scorecard in index selection, and employed these four major contracts to expand the indices that can be available for selection and gain a deeper understanding not only of the financial aspects, but also of customers, the internal process, learning, and innovation. It should be noted that the balanced scorecard can develop the performance goal from the perspective of job fulfillment, and uses this view to assess management performance. These indicators can reflect different focuses regarding job fulfillment, and produce pluralism in the performance indices.

Foundry, Design House, and integrated device manufacturers (IDM) are major characters in the semiconductor industry value chain. The purpose of this paper is to discuss patterns of characters' evolution in technology through patents classified as wafer‐design application patents and wafer‐process patents.

Various patent indicators, such as average patent citation count, and the combination of the average patent citation count and relative patent count share were used to measure the patent activity, patent quality, and the combination of the patent quality and relative patent activity share, respectively. The study period (1979‐2009) was divided into three major technology or wafer size eras, 1979‐1991 for the 6‐ and pre 6‐inch wafer era, 1989‐1999 for the 8‐inch wafer era, and 1997‐2009 for the 12‐inch wafer era.

Foundry has gradually become the technology transferor rather than purely the manufacturing capacity provider. Foundry's impact on the technology level has risen steeply on both the wafer‐process technology fields and the wafer‐design application technology fields. As a result, IDM, traditionally considered the primary technology contributor in the semiconductor value chain for the past 30 years, will continue to be challenged in the semiconductor industry.

Some hypotheses are clarified to provide managerial implications for the semiconductor industry. Owing to Foundry's rise in technology activity and quality, IDM/Design House should not merely view it as one of their capacity providers but should also pursue a technology alliance with it.

The paper clarifies the traditional hypotheses of the characters of technology in the semiconductor value chain.

Taiwan's semiconductor industry continues moving out to China, therefore Taiwan's semiconductor distributors must cooperate with the local distributors in China in order to survive. The purpose of this paper is to discover the key factors considered by Taiwan's semiconductor distributors when selecting partners in China.

This study summarizes the factors from the literatures and the experts' discussion, then develops a hierarchical structure. Using DEMATEL and MMDE to construct the causality of the dimensions, which are then taken as the basis for the development of the analytic network process (ANP) framework. Finally, it gets the weight values of various factors through the results of ANP, which serves as a proposal to discuss how Taiwan's professional semiconductor distributors select partners in China.

According to the weight of the ANP, results show that trust and commitment, scale, market share and corporate culture are factors that increase the possibility of collaboration.

China has become a favorite for foreign investments. Taiwan's semiconductor distributors must actively expand the China market in order to maintain their survival. This study focuses on Taiwan semiconductor distributors who want to invest and establish factories in China, and investigates the key factors that are involved in the selection of partners for Taiwan semiconductor distributors. The results can increase the chances of success among cooperative members.

Facing the competition pressure of internationalization and diversification, the semiconductor industry of Taiwan has to increase the activation/utilization rate of machines, enhance flow speed and values, cut down delivery and reduce costs in an efficient way in reaction to a shortening product life cycle and the global market requirements. As a result, introduction of ERP has become a critical factor of enhancing competitiveness. The purpose of this study is establish a systematic evaluation and improvement mechanism to locate the risk priority number (RPN) of implementation items via failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) for semiconductor related industries in Taiwan while introducing ERP.

A standardized system introduced performance matrix based on the performance evaluation matrix (PEM) will be established in accordance with the locations of severity (S), occurrence (O) and detection (D) and the three RPN indices, in the PEM. Performance levels will be assessed and the performance improvement strategy introduced by the system will be formulated. Finally, items falling within the non‐appropriate performance zone will be specified through the quality function development (QFD) method.

From the results of the case study, the proposed systematic evaluation and improvement on the performance of introducing ERP for the semiconductor industry in Taiwan can be conducted in an efficient way.

All that the management needs to do is to correspond to the positions of these RPN indices of implementation items on the performance matrix. Performance levels will be assessed and the performance improvement strategy introduced by the system will be formulated.

The PEM is demonstrated to be suitable to define the best countermeasure can be sought to serve as a reference for the semiconductor related industries in Taiwan to introduce ERP.

Semiconductor manufacturing is in the spotlight of the global manufacturing industries. Quality management is strategically and tactically important for gaining a competitive advantage. Since Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is one of the major suppliers of global semiconductor products, its quality management practice has a global impact. This research was conducted based on a proven measurement instrument for quality management practices including eight critical factors and 63 measuring items. Data were analyzed with respect to their reliability, mean rank, consistency, and correlation. Analysis results revealed insights into managers’ perception of quality management practices in the semiconductor industries.

The purpose of the present study is to understand the diversity management concept in Taiwan setting by providing a closer look into local companies’ practices. Rational and focus for this research exploration is based on three areas related to diversity management in organizations: external and internal pressures for diversity in Taiwanese companies; companies’ approaches and senior leadership attitude toward diversity; companies’ diversity management practices.

The authors have collected secondary and primary data, including 15 interviews with management, at three large Taiwan semiconductor companies and build a case study of diversity management in Taiwan.

Taiwan companies’ diversity management is motivated mainly by business case and social responsibility goals. They experience a need for diversity management and proactively introduce diversity management policies.

Further studies should look into diversity management practices of smaller private/family-owned companies in Taiwan to get a deeper understanding of the concept in the country using quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Taiwan is historically culturally homogeneous society, which undergoes massive demographic changes under the influence of low birth rate and high rate of immigration. Taiwan situation creates specific economic, cultural, and political context for diversity management that differs from other Asian, European or Western societies.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the construction of a key model for knowledge management (KM) systems using AHP‐QFD for the semiconductor industry in Taiwan.

The performance evaluation matrix was modified to set up a standard performance matrix for system introduction. The importance weights of models related to KM via the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and after consulting experts' opinions. The method of quality function deployment (QFD) was integrated for the system models of a KM system and correlation weights of key objectives to be improved.

Seven key objectives need to be improved. Correlations between the key objectives to be improved and the KM system models are located via QFD for eight critically important models to be improved.

In this study, the questionnaires were e‐mailed to respondents sampled from the list of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA).

Actual cases are investigated and a KM system prototype is established in this research to provide reference for the semiconductor industry when introducing a KM system.

Companies can evaluate the performance of system introduction rapidly and regulate their investments in resources efficiently using the measurement, analysis and improvement methods provided here so that the performance of introducing the KM system will be increased effectively at the lowest cost.