Amkor Technology Philippines (ATP)

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Local Amkor Operations expands technology infrastructure to support its growing business in 2001

For Amkor Technology Philippines (ATP), a world-class provider of contract semiconductor packaging & test services, the year 2001 looks promising. Its local business is expanding with its new P6 manufacturing site at Carmelray Technology Park in Canlubang, Laguna, ready for operations together with ATP's other manufacturing sites such as P1 and P2 in Muntinlupa and P3 and P4 in Laguna Technopark in Biñan, Laguna. The P5 site located in Tanyag, Parañaque was also completed and ready for operations early this year.

ATP's competitive advantage is its best of class, powerhouse management and technology team and its manufacturing workforce to cater to over 150 customers in the semiconductor industry. The company's corporate policy has remained swift in looking for opportunities in the market: there should be no over-dependence on individual customer or market segment. This policy has turned ATP to become the country's top three exporter in four consecutive years, from 1996 to 1999.

As a pioneer member to the USD 1 Billion Export Club since 1996, ATP epitomizes what the Philippine government encourages for its "VISION 2000"- a large employer with huge foreign exchange contributions for the local economy, and a high standard of business ethics.

A commitment to quality culture and systems to continuously improve, discipline, and instill teamwork for total customer satisfaction has led to its continuous investments and exposure in advance technology. Its challenge has been focused on bringing the cost of manufacturing of semiconductor chips without sacrificing quality and commitment to customers. Bringing the product out of the factory in the shortest cycle time and reducing the manufacturing cycle time are but an unwavering passion.

The use of the latest technology to achieve cost effectiveness programs, high-yields manufacturing quality, and short manufacturing cycle time has kept the company in the right direction to aim for quality products and services. Strategic systems and networks.

With this in mind, ATP's Information and Communication Service (ICS) aims to provide the Amkor factory operations in the Philippines with strategic applications systems and communication networks to enable the manufacturing sites achieve their business objectives and goals.

In order to provide best-in-class support to the factories, the ICS aims to run the group like an Amkor factory: the products are systems solutions with the highest quality and at the shortest possible cycle time. It shall track budget and expenses and be accountable on a P&L basis. It shall also be customer-driven and maintain quality and customer satisfaction indices.

Noel Guerrero, vice president of ICS Operations in the Philippines, points to IP technology as a key indicator of the company's progressive technology direction. "ATP is already adopting new business models to face the challenge of the IP Revolution. To date, the company has implemented new IP network technologies in our five factory sites and in our new warehouse in Tanyag, Parañaque," he said.

These include ATM, Fast Ether-Channel and Gigabit Ethernet technology as our backbone architecture; 10/100 MBPS Ethernet switch to the desktop; IP printing for both on LAN and even on the AS400 environment; and, the latest implementation of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology from Cisco Systems. ATP's plan towards IP Telephony is to replace its existing telephone lines using conventional voice multiplexing equipment integrated to VoIP over its T1 network to the US. Although ATP has a T1 voice connection to the US, its direction is to convert voice and data into one channel, which will bring down communication costs. And with Internet telephony getting stable, the company can be ready to interface the VoIP infrastructure into the wide area network.

Manuel S. Collera, Technology Network Architecture Manager at ATP, further added, "We are building our network infrastructure today based on IP technology geared towards the convergence of voice, data, and video traffic in the near future."

He continued, "To date, we have Virtual LAN's and Virtual Private Networks integrated into our main networks, an example of an IP model for networking. We have a number of customer networks extended into our factories via VPN's over the Internet and VLAN's on our internal network. The VPN's are alternatives for our customers to expensive leased lines. These leased lines connect our customers to our factories and creating their own separate networks inside our factories."

He stressed that the VPN implementation reduces the customer's cost of leased line connection to ATP's manufacturing sites. Likewise, VPN's have benefited ATP as they reduce the number of individual customer networks that the company has to maintain. Moreover, the company has made available FTP services for its customers using IP technology for transferring engineering and manufacturing files across the network.

"And we are readying up the infrastructure for the next-generation business-to-business applications. At present, we are sending weekly status or progress reports to customers via e-mail. We are planning to have our customers log into our website and get all the reports through the Internet," he added.

Another IT direction is to eliminate the company's single point of failure in the network by implementing redundancy and hot spares, moving towards a disaster recovery facility. In particular, Collera emphasized the need for redundancy and disaster recovery for its two international links to the US and South Korea. Other expansion activities include the expansion and strengthening of its Internet, Extranet, and Intranet infrastructure to support e-business, Web-based applications and ORACLE ERP implementations. In addition, ATP plans to upgrade its network backbones to Gigabit Ethernet and OC-12 Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) to handle traffic convergence of voice, data and video traffic. The company will also move all applications to IP-based systems, including its legacy IBM AS/400 SNA applications to pure IP-based environment, and IP-based videoconferencing.

Technology partnership with WeSolv

Guerrero said its partnership with WeSolv Open Computing, Inc., the wholly owned networking and communications subsidiary of Fujitsu Philippines, Inc., is a perfect match.

ATP was looking for a high-speed next-generation networking solution to support its growing business, and to eliminate problems that have developed within its existing legacy networking infrastructure.

Because its manufacturing operations are highly automated and very dependent on its enterprise network, ATP can ill afford to make a mistake in selecting its next-generation network. For ATP's network planners, the only acceptable networking solution should employ leading edge technologies that are highly scalable and capable of supporting data, voice, and video traffic. Finally, the new network should be complemented by a very capable and reliable networking support organization.

After conducting an evaluation of available networking products and suppliers, ATP decided on Cisco technology and selected WeSolv to supply the equipment and to provide technical support. WeSolv introduced a Cisco-based campus local area network solution using ATM and Gigabit Ethernet technology, which eventually won the approval of ATP.

ATP decided on the Cisco-based solution, because of its ability to provide a scalable, end-to-end solution and leading edge technologies such as ATM and Gigabit Ethernet. And among the various local Cisco Enterprise Partners, ATP preferred WeSolv because of its track record of installing and maintaining large, mission-critical networks.

Through this project, ATP aims to increase its productivity and efficiency. The new infrastructure will provide faster throughput, with plenty of ports and bandwidth to spare for future applications. As designed, the network will allow steady expansion without requiring a corresponding increase in the size of its internal support team.

ATP began the migration of its existing production network by deploying Cisco switches throughout its manufacturing facilities. The migration was a cornerstone in ATP's strategy to maintain its competitive edge as the world's premier integrated circuit packaging company, without any major disruption in operations.

Guerrero stressed that the big network design challenge is to interconnect various systems located in various sites that use disparate technologies. Different sites, for example, use different types of media, and operate at different speeds.

ATP also essentially considered the availability of reliable local service as an important factor in implementing the Campus ATM network. ATP's individual users, as well as the entire organization, depends on consistent reliable access to skilled human resources. Thus, it is not enough to select the right technology - it has to be complemented by an experienced local support team."

For example, the network management system must provide centralized support and troubleshooting capabilities, especially with a high-performance ATM network. Configuration, security, performance, and other issues must be adequately addressed for the network to function smoothly. Flexibility, the final concern, is necessary for network expansion and new applications and services, among other factors. The quality of Cisco technology, coupled with WeSolv's strong commitment and support, made all these requirements possible.

This project also affirms ATP's commitment to implement and support a total solution for their customers, by providing the high-quality services and products that its customers need to thrive in today's highly competitive business environment.

Collera added that WeSolv is handling ATP's VoIP implementation, including training to aim for technology transfer. "Part of that training direction is to move our people into certification level through the help of WeSolv. We have one Certified Cisco Network Associate (CCNA). We like to increase the number of our people who are certified."

WeSolv has the people with technical expertise to support its network expansion and upgrade implementations, Collera pointed out. "Support from both pre-sales and post-sales are great. The assigned account executives and engineers have been "Amkorized" and were able to adopt the Amkor standards and culture to make the customer satisfied."

ATP has regular monthly vendors meeting to discuss project, technology, and marketing updates, as well as issues and concerns of ATP and its vendors. Guerrero said, "We do have project planning sessions prior to project implementation, this includes design and implementation sessions. We target the transfer of technology from their engineers to our engineers. They also provide training of our engineers as part of any major projects. These helps our own engineers to be Cisco certified."

Collera claimed that when the company started using Cisco networking equipment, WeSolv was chosen from other local Cisco partners because of its depth of technical qualified and certified network engineers, including its high-level of customer service they have provided, both pre-sales and post sales. Their ability to understand the Amkor business and to adopt of the Amkor culture has helped ATP's ICS meet goals and objectives.

"We would like WeSolv to help us in the design and implementation of our network infrastructure upgrades and expansions to reduce maintenance and operational costs associated with the network infrastructure. In Amkor, response time, on-time delivery, and cycle time are important performance indices, which we want WeSolv to also adopt."

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