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Very interest. We’ll see what the industry fall-out is on Tuesday.
TSMC = Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. I presume a “fab” is a fabrication plant.
I would also assume that the corrupt Arizona Democrat political machine ensured that only union workers would build and staff the fab, insuring endless corruption as well as slow production and progress.
What is a fab?
Prediction: US Semiconductor companies (and Japanese) build more foundries in the USA.
Why? Biden is signaling weakness: China may indeed swallow Taiwan
All the chip manufacturers decided to build factories at the same time and the Chips act poured fuel into the fire. TSMC, Intel, Samsung, and TI all started fab build outs concurrently. There are only so many people that know how to build a fab, there are only so many suppliers of chip tools, there are only so many vendors that can supply the chemicals needed. Lead times became years and prices doubled or tripled.
Things were complicated for TSMC because this is their first US fab. In Taiwan they are considered a premium job and receive government support. In the US the workers they compete for see no reason to kill themselves for the company or show reverence to management. This cultural clash has been written about extensively.
It may have been a bad decision to change their business model to chase US government cash but Morris Chang is famously anti U.S. ever since Intel turned him down when he wanted them to partner in the foundry business.
Project management is perhaps the most critical thing in construction. Keeping subcontractors on task, on the “same page”, and on schedule is daunting and very demanding. If a project gets away from a manager, it is a long and steep climb to get it back in hand and on schedule. From my limited knowkedge, it is not unusual for even experienced managers to finally throw up their hands when they meet their Waterloo on a big project.
You’d think there’d be every incentive for all teams to coordinate and cooperate on any project. But it doesn’t take much to throw everything off if one subcontractor falls behind and it isn’t corrected immediately. Because it can cascade into others falling behind soon after. Then a project can grind to a halt and the finger-pointing begins. It can very much be a contest of wills. The project manager(s) and site superintendent(s) against the subcontractors and maybe even the building owners and the builder’s executives.
Perhaps this project has a project management team and a leader—and the schedule is so far out of control that it essentially needs to be reconstructed entirely under a new leader.
...JMHO!