When COVID-19 hit the semiconductor industry, SEMI members were confronted with new hurdles to keeping their employees safe and their operations running uninterrupted. We quickly assisted our global membership around the globe by providing a forum for collecting member insights on best practices for operating and safety procedures, supply chain issues and sentiments on business impact and recovery.
That forum took the form of surveys we launched in March 2020. We shared the results with the larger SEMI member community to help them cope with the evolving impacts of the pandemic on their businesses.
Following is a summary of our 4th survey, issued last month.
Regional and Sector Representation
- Nearly 40% of our respondents represented companies headquartered in North America.
- Of the respondents, 10% each were from companies headquartered in Taiwan and China; 5% from Korea, 13% from Japan and 20% from European and Middle Eastern members.
- The largest share of respondents – 40% – develop equipment for semiconductor fabrication, assembly, and test; 21% supply materials to the microelectronics industry; 14% are device makers; 6% supply software and design services; and 3% are OSATs, EMS suppliers or ODMs.
Measures Member Are Taking to Continue Operations
The May survey found that almost no companies ceased production for any significant length of time. In order to continue operations, companies instituted social distancing and masking requirements, temperature checks, schedule changes, and some contact tracing, all to varying degrees, as shown in Figure 1. In addition, several companies implemented some combination of mandatory testing, bump sensors, air purification and site capacity limits and sequestered foreign workers in separate housing for required quarantines after travelling.
Figure 1
All of these measures are routinely discussed during the regular SEMI EHSS COVID-19 Working Group calls. That group consists of facilities, HR managers and others tasked with ensuring safety monitoring and compliance at member companies.
Company Vaccination Policies
With the pace of vaccine rollouts varying widely around the world, only 5% of respondents are requiring all workers to be vaccinated before returning to the office, and 12% have not yet considered a vaccine policy. The majority of companies are encouraging but not requiring employee vaccinations, and 26% leave the decision to the individual employees.
Figure 2
North American companies constituted the majority of the required and encouraged vaccination categories. In Europe, companies fall into the employee decision or encouraged categories but none require vaccinations. Japanese companies primarily leave the vaccination decision to employees, while Chinese companies are split among the required, encouraged and employee decision categories. Clearly, these guidelines are not required by law in each region, but instead fall to employers and local policymakers.
Member Readiness for Digital Transformation
A solid majority of members reported they have invested in the adoption of digital transformation technologies and practices, though only about 14% expect to continue their digital investments in the coming year. Many respondents have deployed virtual meeting software and have implemented or plan to put in place virtual reality tools for remote diagnostics and predictive modeling for semiconductor manufacturing.
Figure 3
Location by Functional Group in Returning Employees to Sites
Not surprisingly, manufacturing and distribution staff that could work from home during the pandemic are back on site, and respondents signaled that R&D and engineering groups will soon end their remote work, following by finance and procurement. Sales and marketing show the highest percentage of staff working remotely, with sales having the highest number remaining remote for some time to come.
Figure 4
Resilience to Further Economic Uncertainty
Of the 274 companies responding, 229, or 84%, feel more resilient in the face of further economic uncertainty after their response to COVID-19, though continuing supply chain issues and raw materials shortages ranked among their top concerns, as did rising customer demands, their ability to increase capacity utilization rates, and the increasing demands on employees and facilities overall.
Figure 5
Many thanks to all survey respondents over the past year! We’ll keep you up to date on results of future surveys.
For more details on the SEMI EHSS COVID-19 Working Group calls, visit the SEMI COVID Response Site.
To watch the recording of our most recent CEO Webinar – Surging Chip Demand, Digital Transformation, and the Pandemic – What’s Next? – click here. More than 750 people attended the June 2nd webinar sponsored by SEMI members Brooks Automation, Hitachi, JCET, KLA and TEL.
Heidi Hoffman is senior director of Technology Communities marketing at SEMI.