aircannonsinc Chapter 419 Spark Digitization
Chapter 419 Spark Digitization
Woodlands, Singapore, September 12, 2002.
Liang Mengsong stood outside the cleanroom of the wafer fab, looking at the production line inside through the glass window.
The equipment was running, the robotic arm was moving, and silicon wafers were being transferred one by one. He held a freshly printed production report in his hand; the paper was still warm.
He opened the report; the first page was a yield curve. The red line started at 72% in December of last year, climbed all the way up, crossed 75%, crossed 80%, and finally stopped at 85%. He stared at that line for a long time.
Standing next to him was the factory's vice president of production, surnamed Chen, in his forties, wearing frameless glasses. He was an old subordinate that Liang Mengsong had brought from TSMC, and had been with him for over ten years.
"Mr. Liang, the 0.25-micron process has stabilized. The average yield this month is 85%, with the best batch reaching 88%. The monthly capacity is 10,000 eight-inch wafers. The next step is the 0.18-micron copper interconnect process. The key equipment is in place and has been debugged for two months. The technical team estimates that we can start trial production in the first half of next year."
Liang Mengsong closed the report and asked him, "Is the copper interconnect team complete?"
"The core team of seven is in place. Five of them came from TSMC, and two were poached from IBM. They are all veterans with experience in copper processing."
Liang Mengsong nodded without saying a word. He stood there for a while, watching the production line, then turned and walked out.
That afternoon, Liang Mengsong called Ling Yun.
"Mr. Ling, in Singapore, the 0.25-micron process is running smoothly. The yield is 85%, and the capacity is 10,000 wafers. The 0.18-micron copper process will begin trial production in the first half of next year."
Ling Yun said, "Okay. What are your plans for the next step?"
Liang Mengsong said, "0.18 micrometers is a transition. The real goal is 0.13 micrometers. I suggest launching the 'Starlight II' project—building a second wafer fab in Hong Kong or Shenzhen, targeting the 0.13-micrometer process, directly benchmarking TSMC's technology level in 2000. The equipment, the factory, and the team will need to be built from scratch, which will take at least two years. But if we don't start now, we will still be lagging behind in two years."
Ling Yun asked him, "Are you confident?"
There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone. "Yes. The 0.13-micron copper interconnect with low dielectric constant solution that I developed at TSMC wasn't brought to TSMC's production line, but I have it all memorized. The solution itself is mature; what's lacking is the equipment and the team. The equipment can be bought, and the team can be built. As long as the money is in place, I can get the 0.13-micron solution up and running within two years."
Lingyun said, "Then let's do it. You decide on the location, and you provide the budget. Once it's finalized, report it to me, and I'll approve it."
Liang Mengsong said, "Okay."
He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. The sunlight outside the window was bright, shining on the lawn in the factory area where workers were mowing. He watched for a while, then picked up a pen from the table, opened his notebook, and began writing the preliminary plan for "Starlight II". The first line read: 0.13 micrometers, copper interconnect, low-k dielectric, two years.
He stopped after finishing the first page. A thought suddenly popped into his head—TSMC wouldn't stand idly by. They knew the factory had been acquired by Spark, they knew Liang Mengsong was leading the team, and they knew about the 0.18-micron and 0.13-micron plans. Morris Chang wasn't one to tolerate a rival rising under his nose.
Liang Mengsong picked up the phone and dialed a number.
"Mr. Chen, could you check if TSMC has made any recent moves in Singapore or Hong Kong? New factory site selection, equipment procurement, poaching—anything that seems to be happening."
The person on the other end of the phone said, "Mr. Liang, are you worried about them...?"
"I'm not worried. I'm certain they will make their move. I just don't know when or from which direction."
After hanging up the phone, Liang Mengsong stood up and walked to the window. The lawn outside was neatly trimmed, and the sunlight made it shine brightly green. But he knew that beneath the calm surface, undercurrents were already surging.
September 28, 2002, Xinghuo Group headquarters.
Following the ERP system, the CRM and SCM systems also went live today. The command center was still the same conference room, with three large screens and densely packed data dashboards. But this time, Chen Zhongming wasn't as nervous as before. He sat at the command console, a cup of tea in his hand.
Zhao Weiguo sat next to him, with a CRM dashboard in front of them. The screen displayed sales data from all over the country, follow-up records for each salesperson, order status for each customer, and processing progress for each after-sales work order.
"The sales team initially resisted a lot, saying that 'filling out forms is a waste of time.' There was a veteran salesperson who had been there for seven or eight years who said that he didn't need to fill out the forms and his sales targets still went through. I told him that if he didn't fill them out, they wouldn't count as sales targets, and only then did he obediently fill them out."
Zhao Weiguo smiled. "After a month, he came to me himself and said, 'Mr. Zhao, this thing is really useful. The system remembers all the client's preferences, previous follow-up records, and when to make a follow-up call. It knows everything better than he does himself.'"
He clicked on a salesperson's data. This person followed up with forty clients last month, closing twelve deals, a conversion rate of thirty percent. The system recorded notes for each follow-up—what the client asked, their concerns about the price, and when it would be convenient to contact them again.
Zhao Weiguo said, "In the past, all of this was in the salesperson's mind, and the customer was lost when the person left. Now it's all in the system, and whoever takes over can continue the work."
The other screen next to him was the SCM dashboard. Ma Baoguo sat in front of it, staring at the data on it.
"The supplier's on-time delivery rate was 78% last month. After the SCM went live today, the system automatically expedited deliveries and issued warnings. The on-time delivery rate should improve."
He turned a page. "Inventory turnover days: 47 days last month. The target is to reduce it to under 30 days."
Ling Yun stood at the back, watched for a while, and said, "Digitalization isn't a choice, it's a survival question. Whoever doesn't join the system is out. Not today, but tomorrow. And when they're out tomorrow, they won't even know why."
Ma Baoguo nodded.
That afternoon, however, the SCM system suddenly triggered an alarm—delivery data from a Shenzhen supplier was abnormal. The system showed that the supplier had delivered flash memory chips to Xinghuo's Shenzhen factory in three batches over the past week, but the quantity and batch numbers did not match the actual warehousing records. There was a discrepancy of 20,000 chips.
Ma Baoguo immediately called the warehouse manager at the Shenzhen factory. After checking for a while, the manager called back and said, "Manager Ma, the goods did arrive, and the quantity is correct. However, the batch numbers were entered incorrectly into the system; the batch numbers of two batches were merged into one."
Ma Baoguo hung up the phone and breathed a sigh of relief. But Ling Yun, who was listening nearby, had a dark expression.
"It's not a data entry error."
Ma Baoguo was taken aback. "President Ling, you mean...?"
"Twenty thousand flash memory chips, worth hundreds of thousands on the market. The data entry error is just the surface; we need to find out what's underneath."
Ma Baoguo's expression changed. He picked up the phone and dialed the security manager of the Shenzhen factory. "Retrieve all the warehouse surveillance footage of the flash memory chips from the past week, every single frame. Who handled them, who signed off on them, who entered the data—leave no one out."
After hanging up the phone, the conference room was silent for a few seconds. Ling Yun looked at the alarm screen and said, "The system doesn't lie, but people do."
Three days later, the investigation results came out. The warehouse manager of the Shenzhen factory had private dealings with a member company of the South China Electronics Chamber of Commerce. He had "missed" recording the batch numbers of the 20,000 flash memory chips when they were put into storage, and they were actually intended to be resold at a low price as "defective products." He had done this more than once, and before the SCM was implemented, this kind of thing was impossible to detect.
After reading the report, Ling Yun said to Ma Baoguo, "Hand the man over to the police. Keep the system running. That's the meaning of digitization—leaving no place for darkness to hide."