September 21 earthquake that rocked Taiwan tested the rapid-response skills of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and its legendary chairman, Morris Chang. At first, senior managers predicted it would take weeks to restore production. Chang, working in shirtsleeves as office temperatures averaged a sweltering 30 degrees Celsius, pushed them to do better, recalls Ron Norris, senior vice-president for worldwide sales and marketing. His feeling was that we should take the opportunity to let customers know why they're working with us, especially when there's a crisis.
Success can hide a lot of problems.
This crisis showed . . . The quake, devastating as it was, presented a onetime challenge. All projections are for a boom in the foundry business as chip designers and makers of electronic gadgets opt not to build their own production facilities. Numbers like those are drawing a flood of newcomers onto the field and creating the prospect of a surge in global foundry capacity. Chang, who doubles as chairman of Vanguard International Semiconductors, a memory-chip maker, knows well how overcapacity hurt that segment of the semiconductor industry over the past few years.