Building a Customer Requirement Based Supplier Quality Management System

This study utilizes quality function deployment to establisha strategic model that transfers customer requirements for anIC substrate to build action schemes that improve supplierquality management. This study focuses on the transfer ofcustomer requirements of the IC substrate and builds aneffective supplier quality-management system that meetscustomer requirements, such that firms can maintain theircompetitiveness in the IC substrate industry. Qualityfunction deployment in this study is a method to integrateand merge customer requirements into the supplier quality-management process. This study applies a two-stagedeployment including operation and action planning. Studyfindings will enhance IC substrate manufacturing qualitywhen suggested improvements are implemented.

To respond to the highly competitive globalmarketplace, using modern manufacturing equipmentand technology as well as increasing the quality ofcustomer requests are essential to maintaincompetitiveness in the IC substrate manufacturingindustry. Enhancing and managing supplier quality isan important issue for all IC substrate manufacturers.Most enterprises only focus on internal requirementsand overlook execution of supplier quality-management systems. That is, firms rarely integratecustomer requirements into their supplier quality-management system. Thus, time and cost in dealingwith problems of how to make a production processmeet customer requirements increase when customerrequirements are not integrated into the supplierquality-management system. Therefore, a supplierquality-management systemt

An IC substrate is the media between an IC and a PCB.The interior of an IC substrate has a circuit routingthat connects the IC and PCB. The purpose of an ICsubstrate is to ensure that electronic circuit functionswork properly. The main materials in an IC substrateinclude copper foil, resin, dry film (solid photoresist),wet ink (liquid photoresist), and metal materials (e.g.,steel ball, nickel ball, and gold potassium cyanide).Enterprises must manage their supplier quality systemefficiently.Indeed,agoodsupplier-qualitymanagementsystemcansatisfycustomerrequirements from a technical service perspective.Therefore, to achieve high profit and manufacturecustomized IC substrate products, the PCB industryrequires a supplier quality-management system that isbased on customer requirements. Suppliers must meetenterprise requirements and a customers actualrequirements.This study applies the quality function deploymentmethod to establish a supplier quality-managementsystem based on customer requirements. This systemwill assist enterprises through supplier quality-management actions and prioritize each action to meetcustomer requirements efficiently.

Building the Strategic ModelThis study applies quality function deployment toestablish a strategic model that improves supplierquality management. Quality function deployment is awell-used method to integrate and merge customerrequirement into the management system (Besterfieldet al. 2003). The advantage of quality functiondeployment is that it can be applied to product andservice development (Dror and Sukenik 2011; Learyand Burvill 2007; Liang et al. 2006; Yang and Fang2003), and help in planning, assessing and improving

Deployment of Operational AbilityDemand for customer requirementsIn terms of customer requirements, this study focuseson large international IC package firms that have highquality requirements, finding the main requirements,and generating a customer requirement list. Thesources of customer requirements are as follows; thefirst source is quality and audit data; the secondsource is the ISO/TS16949 quality system-relatedrequirements (ISO/TS 16949 quality managementsystem is a particular requirement for the applicationof ISO 9001 for automotive production and relevantservice part organizations); and the third source is themanagement requirement restricting the use ofhazardous substances. To analyze these three sourcesof customer requirements, ten experts (manager ofpurchasing department, operation engineer andmanager, manager of customer) have been consultedto plan and select the customer requirement items.This study divides all customer requirement items intosix categories based on their features. The followingsix items show the customer quality and specifiedrequirements.1. Quality system and management: An internal auditand self-audit are used to determine whether theinternal system is functioning effectively. Thisincludes all processes, activities, and productionarrangements in annual planning that are related toquality management.