An application of fuzzy Delphi and fuzzy AHP on evaluating wafer supplier in semiconductor industry

Abstract

Because of the pressure of globalization in the last two decades, professional services has become an important strategic decision so that supplier selection is a prime concern. In the semiconductor industry, the prior researches worked on analyzing and improving the process, and evaluating the equipment manufacturers. Therefore, being the semiconductor industry applying a wide huge of advanced technologies, wafer suppliers and foundry and DRAM manufacturers acquire a large volume of critical materials and components. Consequently, this study is to identify critical factors related to the wafer supplier selection. It also has become a new subject by how to prompt current position of semiconductor industry and their wafer supplier in Taiwan. Primary criteria to evaluate supplier selection is acquired by the literatures survey, wafer manufacturers' data and applying fuzzy Delphi method (FDM), and then fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is employed to calculate the weights of these criteria, so as to establish the fuzzy multi-criteria model of wafer supplier selection. The results indicated a greatest weight on the dimension of wafer supplier selection, and seven critical criteria related to wafer supplier selection were: (1) wafer quality, (2) delivery time, (3) service, (4) price, (5) process capability, (6) reputation, and (7) past performance.