著者
王 淑珍
出版者
経営史学会
雑誌
経営史学 (ISSN:03869113)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.38, no.4, pp.56-85, 2004-03-25 (Released:2010-11-18)
参考文献数
36

The purpose of this article is to introduce how the Taiwanese government formulated semiconductor industry technology between 1974 and 1983. It includes the process, the mechanism of formulation, and the key factors that lead to success. In 1974, most of the private enterprises' productions were assembling operations and the scale of the private enterprises was too small to transfer semiconductor technology from abroad. In this situation, the Taiwanese government built its first semiconductor factory as part of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to decide whether to adapt semiconductor industry or not. Under this policy, ITRI took three years to transfer 7.0μm CMOS technology from RCA (Radio Corporation of America) and another three years to transfer the technology to a newly established private enterprise, UMC (United Microelectronics Corp.). This was the start of Taiwan's semiconductor industry. As it expanded, it was able to rank fourth in the world in 1994 in semiconductor production. This success was obviously brought by the technology transfer program between 1974 and 1983. There are however, some questions concerning this technology transfer program. The first question is, if RCA did not have the most advanced technology, why did the Taiwanese government choose it to be the technology supplier? Second, after ITRI transferred the technology from RCA, the major American and Japanese semiconductor companies have improved their technology to 1.5μm CMOS. This means, even though ITRI smoothly transferred technology from RCA, UMC was incapable of competing with those companies. How then did they overcome the huge gap that was formed? Third, engineers played a key role during the technology transfer. The question to consider is what were the factors that made their excellent performance possible during the technology transfer? Previous research on Taiwan's semiconductor industry focused on the government's industry policy. However, it is important to note that this period of nine years from 1974 to 1983 occupied one-forth of Taiwan's semiconductor industry history. And furthermore, if the technology transfer program was not a success, Taiwan would have been incapacitated from developing its industry smoothly. This article focuses on the three points mentioned above. At the same time, it examines the early stage of the formulation of Taiwan semiconductor industry technology and explain it thoroughly in a clear way.