Amit Garg is Tensoft’s Director of Software Development and Product Management. Amit was an early member of Tensoft’s team, and is responsible today for managing the software development lifecycle of several products developed and supported by Tensoft. He was one of the technical architects of Tensoft Fabless Semiconductor Management (FSM), and oversees the Tensoft software development team based near New Delhi, India. He has over 10 years experience in software system design, development and implementation. Alejandro Barajas, Tensoft Marketing Associate, recently interviewed Amit, who shared some insight into his approach to software development.

This article focuses on product cost and cost reduction from an operations and finance perspective.  It discusses semiconductor costing by breaking down the components of actual costs and provides a summary of the cost drivers for overall inventory value.    Finally, the article proposes a structural model to build sustained cost reduction strategies for the entire semiconductor organization.

Published in the December 2009 issue of the GSA's Forum, the authors are Bob Scarborough, CEO of Tensoft, and Regis Bescond, Corporate Controller of Amlogic.  

Ron Jones is a recognized expert on the outsourced fabless semiconductor environment. CEO of N-Able Group International, Jones spearheads the Business Management Systems Subcommittee of the Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA), which strives to raise awareness of how management systems can increase the effectiveness of fabless companies. Recently, Tensoft’s Director of Business Development, Caprice Murray, had an opportunity to interview Ron, and discuss fabless industry history and his vision for the future.

Syndiant is a leading fabless manufacturer of light-modulating panels used in high-resolution displays for ultraportable projectors. When the company moved its light-modulating panels from research and development into production, it needed to build a supporting enterprise resource planning system. To do so, Syndiant engaged Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Tensoft to drive a cloud-based deployment of Microsoft Dynamics GP and the vertical-industry solution Tensoft Fabless Semiconductor Management. With the fully integrated and industry-specific solution in place, Syndiant has successfully transitioned into production, growing its sales from a couple units per week to more than 5,000 units per week.

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Tensoft implements Tensoft FSM and Microsoft Dynamics GP, allowing Amalfi Semiconductor to gain a firm grasp on its business.

Managing a rapidly growing fabless semiconductor firm using traditional ERP software was proving to be impossible for Ramtron, a public company. They needed to a solid manufacturing and accounting solution designed specifically for fabless needs.

“We see some pretty big growth in our future, and we see the FSM product and Tensoft growing with us, in parallel. There are other products out there that purport to do what FSM does. They look really good in the beginning, but begin to show cracks once they’ve been in place for a while. We’ve had exactly the opposite experience. In fact, our respect for the Tensoft team and the capabilities of FSM has grown, the longer we work together.” – Brian Yates, Budget, Planning & Treasury Manager, Ramtron International

Quickly and accurately plan for material requirements with Tensoft FSM Planning and Forecasting.  Improve your business performance and exploit supply chain opportunities with unified strategic, tactical and operational supply chain optimization, with visibility to all stakeholders.

Given the time, standards and industry discussions to date on the topic of vendor supply chain integration - as well as individual company efforts that have been dedicated to SCM integration - one big question remains.  Why isn’t this process easier by now?  This white paper discusses the challenges to collaboration in the semiconductor supply chain, and suggests a possible solution.  Semiconductor industry vetern Ron Jones and Tensoft CEO Bob Scarborough provide insight on the history of semiconductor supply chain management, the issues around data integration, and the role of data quality. 

 The goal of this article is to map business process and infrastructure requirements to the growth path of a fabless company, to overlay the SOX compliance requirements with these process requirements, and to look at a few ways where companies can leverage this infrastructure and these compliance models to improve overall business performance.