"One of the most important factors is time to market. The semiconductor industry is in a very difficult position in this respect because the supply chain and thus the lead time is quite long.
Typically, more than 20 weeks from the start of wafer processing to final chips is not abnormal. Thus, if a shortage in the supply chain occurs, e.g. due to increasing demand, allocation for 30-50 weeks is not really special. In the case of our products where we do rather complex backside processing, we had to add another 11 weeks to the supply lead time one year ago. This situation was not satisfying at all and we decided to invest heavily into additional in-house capabilities.
The result is now that we can do the backside and the back-end processing of the wafers within days, if needed. We showed this performance in a recent project where lead time from wafer production start until the chips were in the lab was only nine weeks. Not just wafer processing and backside processing, but also assembly including AR coating and band-pass filter bonding."
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