Work Force Development Challenges in the Wide Band Gap Supply Chain Industry

Reduced Research, Development, and Engineering cycle times in new product development efforts have increased pressure in all three disciplines causing management teams to seek the most productive paths to success.  Of these three, the development effort, in particular process development is the most challenged.  Workforce requirements to close this gap are a working knowledge of semiconductor processing with practical expertise of WBG material properties and processing in one of the four following supply chain elements: substrate, epi, device, and packaging, and a working knowledge of the remainder. To solve specific problems, a solid foundation in Applied Engineering with strong skills in Design of Experiments, Statistics, and Process Control are required.  Finally, barriers created by non-compete agreements and IP issues are increasing.