Poor schedule predictability of IC development projects is the Achilles heel of semiconductor companies. It manifests itself as high schedule slip and is among the most important R&D metrics, measuring how well project schedules reflect reality. Most don’t.

Companies traditionally view schedule slip not as a result of faulty project plans, but rather as a consequence of unforeseeable perturbations occurring during the development process. The picture is incomplete and inaccurate. Slip must also be viewed through the project planning lens, because many events labeled as unforeseeable can be fully contemplated in the project plan with proper modeling. The payoff is big—reliable plans, which is the path to profitability. [More]

Engineering utilization, productivity and throughput are among the most important metrics for measuring R&D performance. If you want to improve your R&D capability, focus on these three metrics.

Productivity and utilization directly determine throughput, and throughput is the most important of all R&D performance metrics. It measures the rate at which an R&D team develops production-ready products. The higher the productivity and utilization, the higher the R&D throughput. Higher throughput means the R&D team churns out more products in a given period of time. That usually translates to revenue and profits— assuming the rest of the enterprise pulls its weight. Big assumption, right? [More]