SEMATECH News
ISMI Manufacturing Symposium Keynotes to Focus on Best Practices and Business Strategies that Shape Manufacturing Growth
Steve James of Texas Instruments and Masakazu Kakumu of Toshiba to headline program
Austin, TX (August 25, 2008) – International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI) Manufacturing Week today confirmed its second keynote speaker, Steve James, manager of Texas Instruments (TI) DFAB wafer fab. Mr. James and Masakazu Kakumu, vice president of System LSI Division, Semiconductor Company, Toshiba Corporation will present keynote speeches at the 5th ISMI Symposium on Manufacturing Effectiveness, held Oct. 22-23 at the Hilton Austin Airport hotel in Austin, Texas.
Masakazu Kakumu’s presentation, entitled “Toshiba's Semiconductor Business Strategies for Growth,” takes place at 8:15 am on October 22. Mr. Kakumu will introduce Toshiba's strategies for achieving growth in business scale and profit as an IDM and will discuss the best practices applied to Toshiba's 300mm CR for enhancing productivity. In this connection, he said, “Toshiba pays great respect to ISMI activities, and expects much of the achievements to be obtained by the work in collaboration with ISMI.”
Masakazu Kakumu joined Semiconductor Device Engineering Laboratory, Toshiba Corporation, Kawasaki, Japan, in 1981. He was engaged in development of CMOS process and device technology for high-density static RAM. Most recently, he worked as technology executive from 2003 to 2006 and as general manager of Oita Operations from 2006 to 2008. Masakazu Kakumu was named Toshiba corporate vice vresident in June 2008 and vice president of System LSI Division, Semiconductor Company in April 2008.
Mr. James’ keynote presentation, entitled “Gaining Competitive Advantage in Today’s Environment,” takes place at 8:15 am on October 23. He will discuss how to employ best practices to rapidly improve manufacturing results and share his personal experiences with TI’s world-class 5S and Kaisen Blitz programs.
As James explains, “The semiconductor industry is the epitome of high-tech, but we need to integrate low-tech programs for factories to perform. These low-tech best practices are a critical component of manufacturing, and we should apply methodologies for improvement from other industries. In our case, we’ve seen huge improvement in people productivity, quality, cost, and cycle time using a largely unconventional approach.”
James has more than 25 years of manufacturing operations experience. In his role as wafer fab manager, he manages more than 600 employees in the TI DFAB site in Dallas, Texas. He has served in a variety of engineering and operations roles at TI including fab engineering manager, product engineering manager, and device analysis manager.
ISMI Manufacturing Week will be held October 20-23, providing four days of technical courses and workshops, supplier exhibits, technical posters and networking events for equipment and software suppliers, chipmakers and other semiconductor manufacturing high-tech professionals. During the first two days of the event, there will be a wide range of short courses and workshops, as well as networking receptions.
The week will conclude with a panel discussion, moderated by G. Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research, addressing some of the "hot-button" issues surrounding the current and future state of semiconductor manufacturing in G7 countries, followed by a session updating participants on the recent progress of the ISMI fab transition strategy.
To register for this exciting event or for general information about ISMI’s Manufacturing Week, please visit http://ismi.sematech.org/ismisymposium.
About ISMI
ISMI is a global alliance of the world’s major semiconductor manufacturers, dedicated to reducing cost per wafer, and ultimately cost per die, through cooperative programs focused on manufacturing effectiveness. The consortium conducts programs in manufacturing infrastructure, methods, standards, and productivity, with the aim of reducing the costs of producing finished wafers and chips and driving solutions to major productivity challenges. ISMI is a wholly owned subsidiary of SEMATECH of Austin, TX. For more information, please visit http://ismi.sematech.org