GLOBALFOUNDRIES Singapore supporting INTECH in moving up the value chain

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the economy and many businesses in Singapore and around the world, both large and small.

Challenges Faced by Local SMEs

For many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), survival becomes the primary concern as businesses struggle to weather the economic fallout from COVID-19. While SMEs tackle operational challenges, they are facing other tough challenges such as flagging sales, cash flow as well as supply chain disruptions, workers under lockdown, delayed customer payments, and customers changing order priorities.

Call to Support Local SMEs

SMEs represent a key pillar in Singapore’s economy and their survival is imperative to the success of our nation. GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) Singapore recognizes the importance of local SMES and initiated a call to support them amidst the onset of the current crisis. With the increasing demand for semiconductors, GF is taking a more proactive approach to help build a stronger, more resilient local supply chain and ecosystem to support the industry.

SemiconductorA Vital Industry

Over the past several months, the semiconductor industry has become more vital than ever, especially at such a defining time.

Millions of people are working from home and engaged in online learning. Without the support of home-office tech and electronics, people are facing the task of telecommuting and remote learning. This created soaring shipment demand for consumer electronics such as laptop computers, Wi-Fi routers and countless electronic applications during the ongoing pandemic.

Semiconductor-based diagnostic devices are in great demand. These devices are needed to help healthcare professionals to monitor patients for pneumonia and lung-related symptoms associated with COVID-19. To fight the contagion, supercomputers with high-performance computing are used for COVID-19 simulation analyses, virus detection researches, contact tracing, mutation studies in the coronavirus genome, virus vaccines development, and more.

More consumer services are going contactless in the light of this pandemic. This has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies. To successfully ride the wave of digital transformation, companies are investing and modernizing their IT infrastructure to analyze increasing data and turn them into actionable and data driven insights.

Importance of SMEs in Our Ecosystem

GF has been actively navigating the pandemic crisis while taking extraordinary steps to safeguard its workforce and manufacturing operations. Besides, the company continues to provide support to the community it is operating in, protecting and connecting the world. In these difficult times, we further experienced the importance of the interconnectivity of our business ecosystem, particularly with the local SMEs whom we work with very closely in Singapore.

SMEs are an essential part of Singapore’s economy — employing two thirds of Singapore’s workforce and contributing nearly half of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To date, a significant number of local SMEs have been severely affected by the pandemic crisis and these businesses have been struggling to survive without help. GF Singapore recognizes the criticality to support the livelihoods of these small businesses and also sees the bigger role that SMEs can play in global supply chains — these SMEs have the potential to provide more value-added customized services and high quality products at faster speeds to market.

Building Stronger Capabilities

To assist SMEs get back to business, GF Singapore initiated a capability program to assist them in moving up the value chain. GF began collaborating and supporting a local SME — Intech Technologies (INTECH) — to develop and enable new assembly packaging technologies and capabilities.

System-in-Package (flip chip with wire bond assembly) Wire bond assembly

 

“GLOBALFOUNDRIES has been providing many opportunities to INTECH since the inception of the company more than 10 years ago. Throughout these years, INTECH has grown from strength to strength in meeting the demands of the market. We are very privileged to be a supplier to GF and especially so during this COVID-19 pandemic. We are able to continue to grow our capability and capacity with GF and our collaboration can certainly help to enhance our products and solutions portfolio, putting us in a better light with a competitive edge in the market. Riding on this initiative, INTECH has huge opportunities in expanding its existing packaging assembly line, upskilling our workforce and core competencies,” said Mr Lee Soon Chin, managing director of INTECH.

 

Wafer dicing operation Wire bonding operation

The outcome of this collaborative initiative will be extremely beneficial for both companies. The build-up of this reliable and first class packaging capability will also open up more gateways for other local SMEs like INTECH to serve the semiconductor industry and its ecosystem in Singapore and around the world amidst these challenging times.

“GLOBALFOUNDRIES Singapore is happy to partner with INTECH, as part of our initiative to support our local SMEs in moving up the value chain. INTECH’s ability to provide a fast turnaround cycle time will be a value add to meet GF Singapore’s time to market requirements,” remarked Mr KC Ang, Chief Manufacturing Officer, Worldwide Fab Operations of GF. “We would like to see more of such collaborations as they will further enhance our local semiconductor ecosystem and strengthen the industry’s capabilities as well as self-sufficiency in the supply chain.”

Sources of images: GLOBALFOUNDRIES Singapore and INTECH

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Chak Huat Yeo (Senior Director) and Kai Chong Chan (Deputy Director), GLOBALFOUNDRIES Singapore