IES Engineering Support Services Reduce Semiconductor Industry ‘Hiring & Firing'
Through its outsourcing services, IES helps customers avoid raising headcounts during the temporary industry upturn
UK-based factory relocation, engineering services and logistics specialist IES Ltd is making life easier for the notoriously volatile semiconductor equipment Industry. IES, which has supported semiconductor manufacturing since 1991, now has over 100 of the industry's best equipment engineers on its books. Through its outsourcing services, IES helps customers avoid raising headcounts during the temporary industry upturn.
‘Growing demand for highly-skilled temporary engineering personnel'
Commenting on the semiconductor industry outlook for 2011 and the role of his company's outsourcing services, IES Sales Director Matt Boyd says: "During the current upturn, our outsourcing services solve a common industry problem. In the past, semiconductor fabrication companies hired highly-skilled and experienced engineering support staff before having to let them go, with negative consequences for local communities when the industry later fell into recession. It's good to see that our engineering resources services can have beneficial social impacts."
Engineering support services bring benefits for everyone
According to Boyd, it's win-win for everyone involved in this high technology industry. That includes customers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and engineers themselves. ‘Customers enjoy excellent customer support and pay much lower rates. Our high-quality outsourcing solution is now widely used and increasingly cost-effective for OEMs that prefer professional outsourcing to traditional hire and fire policies.'
The highest quality Customer Interface Team
With 28 years in semiconductor engineering and management, IES Engineering Resource Support (ERS) Manager, Kevin Stribley, is responsible for signing up the highest quality engineers and managing this vast engineering support resource to maximize customers' satisfaction.
According to Stribley, providing a ‘one-stop shop' for the semiconductor fabrication industry is a top priority. ‘Whenever customers need process or equipment support in any area of wafer fab, whether lithography, diffusion/implant, thin films, etch, CMP, inspection or metrology, we can provide experienced engineers with years of semiconductor fabrication experience at short notice.'
IES has also hired Rick Halle as Business Development Manager to grow and manage ERS sales. Halle brings 25 years' experience selling processing (photo, furnace, PVD, CVD and etch), wafer inspection and metrology equipment (KLA-Tencor and Nicolet). His product knowledge and understanding of the European and US customer base has already brought rapid success and exponential sales growth for IES ERS.
Minimizing wafer supply risks during fab relocation
Halle says: ‘This unique service complements the core IES logistics business for customers in the semiconductor industry. As many of our European and US customers relocate production to Asia they need equipment support including decontamination of processing tools, de-installation, packing, shipping, location in the new facility, installation and commissioning with minimal disruption to manufacturing. We provide a complete package of managed support services for the fastest possible turnaround time from last wafer processing at the original facility to first wafer processing at the new one, so the customer minimizes potential supply risks to its customers. Over the coming years we plan to extend this successful business model from semiconductor fabrication to other markets such as pharmaceuticals.'
IES also helps maximize customers' gross margins
Many IES customers make commodity products in high volumes, albeit with eroded gross margins. These customers increasingly approach IES for equipment support to keep their human resource costs as low as possible, thereby maintaining or improving product profitability.
IES ERS – a winning outsourcing solution for industry
IES Engineering Resource Support is a winning source of valuable engineering resources for the semiconductor industry, providing jobs for engineers around the world, benefiting local communities and providing a repeatable successful business model for IES to take to their other customers' markets.
About IES Engineering Resource Support Team: With more than 60 years' in-house technical knowledge, around 100 OEM-trained engineers on our books and in-depth experience in the semiconductor industry, the IES engineering resource support team is uniquely qualified to match engineers' skills to the requirements of the engineering industry – with particular emphasis on the special challenges of semiconductor processing, inspection, metrology and Back-end of Line (BEOL) processing
Engineering resource support is just one of many IES services including the following:
engineering services
logistics services
equipment modification
machine movement
machine installation
factory relocation
freighting
engineering programme management
case making
CE marking
customs clearance
These make IES a perfect one-stop partner for specialised industrial or research organisations.
SOURCE: PRWeb
View original release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/engineering/support/prweb4957394.htm