Business cycle influences most of all industries without changing for year. However, semiconductor industry got the most affected one among those industries. The subsidiary industry of semiconductor industry¡Xsemiconductor equipment industry inherit all of characteristic from semiconductor and shows more significant performance than semiconductor industry to the business cycle. It had to increase the salary to enhance the attraction to get employee¡Xespecially those employee to do the after sales service jobs, while the business cycle is in the upturn position. It resulted in increasing human resource cost to those semiconductor equipment players. Of course, it will be the first target to reduce fixed costs which increased from the upturn, while the business cycle get to the down turn position. It will NOT benefit to semiconductor equipment industry if all the players just increase/decrease the employee numbers to response back to the business cycle fluctuation. Not only eroding the competition but also increasing the socioeconomic issue if a company follows the obsolete way to handle the business cycle fluctuation. There is still few industry could be utilized and have had been tremendous growth such as internet industry. If we could utilize internet technology to establish one system to achieve current operations in service and maintenance, it will help semiconductor equipment players a lot to decide how many employee they should increase while the business cycle in upturn position according to the internet system. By doing this way they could shift the thumb of the rule from original obsolete way. Porter¡]2001¡^points out that many of the companies that succeed will be ones that use the Internet as a complement to traditional ways of competing, not those that set their Internet initiatives apart from their established operations. This study not only could offer a new thinking to current players in semiconductor equipment industry to establish competitive advantage, but also provide a basis for those players in Taiwan intend to involve in semiconductor equipment industry. It will build up Taiwan semiconductor equipment industry¡¦s competitive advantage by increasing the successful rate for those Taiwan players in the industry and secure the Nation sustaining competitive advantage by aggregating more successful semiconductor related industry.

More and more managers understand to succeed the enterprises, beside the touchable products and untouchable service; they must have well management processing and knowledge management, therefore, the organization can keep to develop the predominance of competition and fit the variable competitive environment in today¡¦s market. Facing the threat from competition and market fast changing in 21 century, enterprises have to get more information to overtake the competition and always on top in the variable market environment. Therefore, enterprise must have quality of high market orientation, and use knowledge management to help enterprise collect correlation information to strengthen the market orientation of enterprises. This research is from the customer¡¦s demand aspect, to realize customer¡¦s actual and potential demand, and combine with the necessary of customer¡¦s daily use, to be the important member as the activities of creative customer value. This study is to take Applied Materials as a case study to evaluate its importance in Wafer Fab Equipment Industry. It based on the theory and perspectives of Balanced Scorecard to analyse its strategy map. My research will analyze how companies survive successfully with their unique core competence in the fast-moving and competitive global market. As a company, our customer¡¦ business results comes first. It is important that we continue to harness our innovative technologies to improve productivity and to offer irreplaceable product values that exceeding customer expectations. Identifying customer needs, in order to provide appropriate products and service. The company strongly facilitate the development of sound local industrial infrastructures so that the industry chain in which we operating will continue to grow and flourish. Theses are the leadership philosophies and value systems typical of a successful corporation. Discussion on the competitive advantage and strategic management of individual local spare parts suppliers present an insight to the adoptive strategic methods these companies employed to stand strong in this ever changing, competitive market. Economic environment will be a big impact on semiconductor industry. In the future in order to survive, semiconductor equipment industry in Taiwan need to approach to get access to their customers and the market.

The life cycle of the semiconductor equipment industry has evolved from a fast growth high profit ramp-up phase to one of much slower growth and intense competitiveness that has squeezed profit margins. In this environment, one of the key success factors for semiconductor equipment suppliers is product management. A correct product planning and implementation strategy will generate a healthy market performance and profitable business operations. Semiconductor equipment manufacturers and agents need to consider their product competencies to develop a planning strategy for new product introduction, which includes product positioning, target market selection as well as new product introduction guidance and evaluation procedures. This thesis focuses on industrial data analysis and a case study based on face-to-face interviews with several people at various positions within semiconductor equipment suppliers. The major approach of this study is a description of competitive strategy through a qualitative analysis of the industry, and an analysis the key factors¡Xincluding product management, product lifetime cycle and knowledge management¡Xthat influence the technology service ability of an equipment company. The conclusions of this study are presented as follows: 1. Semiconductor agency has to introduce new product to different market segments for its product life time extension or future business development as well as product competence enhancement. 2. New technology development trends become a threat to existing technology and products, which will replace current products in the market within a short period. 3. Product management needs a procedure to evaluate the new product and the service income potential in order to assess the product¡¦s profit and loss prospects. Then the management can adjust the business priorities to maximize total company revenue through periodic review. Future studies should consider the effect of changes in the industrial structure and/or the market environment and analyze the impact on market development risks and strategies. Keywords: Semiconductor Equipment Agency, Product Management, Targeting Market, Resource Based, Knowledge Management

As one of the top four IC revenue contributed countries, Taiwan is getting higher and higher weight in the world. With the highest density of 12-inch factory per area in the world, Taiwan is in the first tier of semiconductor equipment buyers. In year 2006, for an example, there was about eight billion US dollars spent in this island for her semiconductor manufacturing capacity expansion, which weighted 18.7% in the worldwide semiconductor equipment capital spending in 2006. It was only second to Japan. For a 12-inch fab, that will cost it 75% more in its whole capital spending. However, it is less than 1% spent in local equipment companies. That is no doubt we should pay more attention on this missing part of Taiwan semiconductor supply chain. After millennium, the center of semiconductor manufacturing has been migrating toward to Great Asia, the most promising and emerging area in the world. For the semiconductor equipment capital expense, according to Gartner Dataquest survey results, great Asia including Japan is the number one expense area in more than 50% weight in the world after year 2000. And the great Asia except Japan has been becoming the highest growing area in the expense of semiconductor equipment. Furthermore, its CAGR from 2005 to 2011 is estimated more than 11% which is 3% higher than the worldwide average at the same period. In the trend of this migration of semiconductor equipment market to Great Asia, especially the great China area, it¡¦s definitely a good opportunity for Taiwan to be prepared and ready to this era and try to play an important role in it. In this study, with the analysis of industrial environment in Porter¡¦s five competitive forces structure, a case study of company X is carried out as a successful example of global competitive strategy practice based on the methodology of Yip (2003) Global Strategy Levels. From a higher perspective on corporate strategy level, it intends to demonstrate the possibility to enhance the competitive advantage of Taiwan semiconductor industry in leverage of global strategy.

The life cycle of the semiconductor equipment industry has evolved from a fast growth high profit ramp-up phase to one of much slower growth and intense competitiveness that has squeezed profit margins. In this environment, one of the key success factors for semiconductor equipment suppliers is product management. A correct product planning and implementation strategy will generate a healthy market performance and profitable business operations. Semiconductor equipment manufacturers and agents need to consider their product competencies to develop a planning strategy for new product introduction, which includes product positioning, target market selection as well as new product introduction guidance and evaluation procedures. This thesis focuses on industrial data analysis and a case study based on face-to-face interviews with several people at various positions within semiconductor equipment suppliers. The major approach of this study is a description of competitive strategy through a qualitative analysis of the industry, and an analysis the key factors¡Xincluding product management, product lifetime cycle and knowledge management¡Xthat influence the technology service ability of an equipment company. The conclusions of this study are presented as follows: Semiconductor agency has to introduce new product to different market segments for its product life time extension or future business development as well as product competence enhancement. New technology development trends become a threat to existing technology and products, which will replace current products in the market within a short period. Product management needs a procedure to evaluate the new product and the service income potential in order to assess the product¡¦s profit and loss prospects. Then the management can adjust the business priorities to maximize total company revenue through periodic review. Future studies should consider the effect of changes in the industrial structure and/or the market environment and analyze the impact on market development risks and strategies.

Please see the English Abstract / In the 21st century, the globalization movement to multinational corporations is an inevitable process to maintain the continuous business growth. Asia, in particular, has drawn all the attention of multinational corporations worldwide and is considered as the region of the century. This research is designed to study the Asian regional operations of a multinational corporate in semiconductor equipment industry. In response to the regional customers demand, the regional competition, and the regional operations cost reduction, the case company has strategically established regional operations centers in Asia, covering the aspects of technical support, technical training, parts logistics, parts sourcing and repairing, as well as service outsourcing. This study found that the outstanding regional operations strategy plays a key role in the industrial competition and the overall operational excellence. The service enhancement through the technical support and spares sourcing can directly benefit the IC manufacturing customers and reword to the cost reduction of the regional operations. The studied case company clearly can be a benchmark of the regional operations practices for semiconductor equipment industry as well as for other related industries. Furthermore, the objective of this research is to provide useful suggestions that may help the firms in the industry on their future regional operations strategies setting as well as offer the academic researchers with a good case study of the development of regional operations in Asia.

半導體光電元件普及於各式各樣的電子設備與產品中，可說是支持現代工業社會迅速發展的基礎，因此半導體產業一直是相當引人注目之行業。一般而言，企業要尋求及建立相對優勢，以保有相對之競爭優勢，其可茲運用之策略眾多，價格差異化、強化本身與顧客之關係、發展品牌、提升顧客滿意度，均是可使用之方式。對半導體設備商來說，除了價格、品牌策略外，本研究認為顧客關係管理對於半導體設備商來說，是相當重要的一項議題，半導體光電設備供應商的供應鏈必須具有高回應性才能滿足客戶需要。透過個案研究，本研究系探討半導體光電設備商顧客關係管理之面向與策略，以及顧客關係管理對半導體光電設備商之影響。研究發現，透過顧客關係管理，半導體光電設備商得以在提升顧客價值、客製化顧客需求、降低顧客成本、模組化顧客溝通模式的目標下，利用整合顧客知識、建置顧客管理平台、建立顧客認同、以及公司高階管理者涉入的策略下，得以降低公司在取得新顧客時所需的成本，同時提高既有顧客忠誠度、提升產品競爭力、並提高銷售績效。 / Semiconductor industry is still a promising business in high technology, and the companies in this field have to seek and construct their strength and superiorities to retain the competitiveness. In the light of the distinct tactics of business, customer relationship management is quite an important issue for semiconductor equipment manufacturers besides price and brand image strategies. For the supply chains of semiconductor equipment manufacturers, only the high responsiveness of customer can bring the high satisfactions of customer. The purpose of study hence is to discuss the dimensions and the tactics of customer relationship management of semiconductor equipment manufacturers, and the effect of customer relationship management to the development of semiconductor equipment manufacturers through case study. As the results, semiconductor equipment manufacturers can improve their product competitiveness, customer loyalty, and the cost of getting new possible customers via the tactics of customer knowledge integration, the customer identities, customer management platform, and the involvement of high level manager under the multiple feasible targets.