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.

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.

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.