Semiconductor & OSAT: how it works and what to require
Semiconductor and outsourced assembly and test (OSAT) procurement depends on a small number of qualified sources, constrained capacity and change-sensitive processes. Proconomy governs qualification, approved-source control, lot-level documentation and change assessment, and escalates capacity and supplier exceptions early enough to act on.
A narrow qualified base. And no room to improvise.
One exception can move a quarter when substitutability is low.
Qualification
- Multi-stage process qualification
- Substrate and material qualification
- Assembly and test partner qualification
- Evidence held per gate
- Site or process change re-qualification
- Second-source qualification in parallel
Capacity and commitment
- Committed volume by period
- Supplier acknowledgement against commitment
- Capacity shortfall notified by a supplier
- Reallocation across partners
- Allocation during constraint
- Long-lead material planning
Traceability
- Lot documentation held against the purchase
- Customer traceability requests
- Material genealogy across assembly
- Test data retention
- Change history per process step
- Evidence assembled without a three-day exercise
Risk
- Single qualified source by material
- Geographic concentration
- Sub-tier dependency below the assembly partner
- Site or process change after the fact
- Supplier financial position
- Continuity planning for a constrained material
Six mechanisms. Qualification and capacity together.
Evidence per gate, commitments tracked, traceability held against the purchase.
| Mechanism | What it has to do |
|---|---|
| Multi-stage qualification with evidence per gate | Each stage carries required evidence, an owner and a deadline, so a qualification stalling at stage three is visible rather than assumed on track. |
| Commitment tracking against acknowledgement | Supplier acknowledgements measured against committed volume, with shortfalls raised as exceptions rather than discovered at delivery. |
| Change assessment before effect | A site or process change under a qualification agreement triggers assessment before it takes effect rather than after. |
| Lot documentation against the purchase | Traceability evidence held on the supplier and purchase record, retrievable without assembling it from email and a shared drive. |
| Single-source exposure measured | Where a material or process has one qualified supplier, and how far a second is through qualification. |
| Parallel commercial and qualification tracks | Capacity commitments and qualification status move together rather than sequentially. |
A description of what the practice requires, not a feature list.
What to make any vendor demonstrate
- Stall a qualification at stage three and see whether anyone is told.
- Enter a supplier capacity shortfall and watch how it reaches a planner.
- Request a lot traceability pack as a customer would, and time it.
- Ask how a site change under a qualification agreement is detected.
- Ask how second-source qualification status is surfaced before it is urgent.
Definitions. Asked and answered.
Yes, as multi-stage workflows with named owners, evidence requirements, escalation on overdue stages and explicit approval scope at each gate. The technical acceptance decisions remain with your quality and engineering teams.
Approval scope is explicit by material, process, entity and product. Sourcing eligibility and purchasing both apply it, and any use of an unqualified source requires an authorised, recorded exception.
No. It governs your own commitments, acknowledgements and supplier-raised exceptions — so a capacity shortfall reaches a planner as an exception rather than sitting in one inbox for a fortnight. Market intelligence comes from your own sources.
As configurable document requirements collected through the supplier portal and retained against the relevant purchase and supplier record, so retrieval does not depend on searching email.
The notification opens a governed assessment routed to procurement, quality and engineering. Whether re-qualification is required, and what it involves, is a human decision that is recorded.
An outsourced semiconductor assembly and test provider performs packaging, assembly and test for semiconductor companies that do not do it in house. The relationship involves formal process qualification, which is why supplier change management matters more than in most categories.
Process qualification is the formal demonstration that a specific manufacturing process at a specific site can produce to requirement consistently. Because it is site- and process-specific, a supplier change to either normally requires re-qualification.
Because substitutability is low. Qualifying an alternative is a multi-stage technical exercise measured in months, so a supply interruption cannot be resolved commercially in the way it can in most categories.