Semiconductors have a supersized impact on the global economy. Our experience along the full semiconductor value chain helps industry players, OEMs, and public sector clients navigate a shifting landscape.
It’s hard to overstate the technical complexity, economic interdependencies, or global importance of the semiconductor industry. The challenges industry stakeholders are facing are both unique and formidable as well. By combining experience across the semiconductor industry with expertise in areas like corporate strategy, engineering and operations, BCG empowers companies that create semiconductors—and the organizations and communities that rely on them.
We view the semiconductor industry through a holistic lens. That’s because it takes an end-to-end perspective and a range of capabilities to seize the full potential of an evolving, often volatile, global semiconductor market. Delivering innovative solutions and business models in the most effective and efficient way is key. This requires a long-term vision, growth enablers, and a trifecta of technical, business, and market insights. To guide the way, we’ve developed our semiconductor consulting around five building blocks:
We partner with a full spectrum of industry players from semiconductor design companies and end-product manufacturers to industry giants and high-growth startups. They all share a relentless drive to innovate—and get results. So do we. Here are some examples of our work.
Transforming the sales and marketing organization at a semiconductor company. We redesigned our client’s sales and marketing function so it could better serve global customers while at the same time, better utilize its regional teams. The transformation had several components. Among them: striking a balance between accounts hosted centrally and those hosted by the regions, building a unit devoted to customer and sales excellence, reshaping roles and responsibilities, and making it all stick through robust change management. With this foundation in place, the company hopes to accelerate its path to $100 billion in revenue.
Developing a contract manufacturer strategy for an electronic design automation company. While our client had deep expertise with the software side of EDA, its experience with supply chains—integral to a new business unit focusing on hardware emulation—was nascent. Our semiconductor consultants created a blueprint for selecting best-in-class contract manufacturers. We also redesigned roles and responsibilities to foster more efficient—and more effective—collaborations. Through these efforts, the company expects to achieve its goal of doubling its growth rate.
As trends in chip manufacturing threaten to significantly increase semiconductor industry CO2 output in the immediate future, companies must adopt new plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without delay.
Using capital expenditures to increase domestic production capacity isn’t the only solution to semiconductor shortages. Instead, chip makers in the US and elsewhere can achieve expansion through productivity improvements.
To slash their substantial greenhouse gas emissions, chip manufacturers must focus on turning their upstream supply chain green.
The National Semiconductor Economic Roadmap offers a plan for supporting the US industry and boosting global resilience.
Global preeminence in this critical industry sector is not guaranteed. What are the risks to US leadership, and what steps should it take if it aims to defend its position?
This report provides a critical framework, focus and funding for the US R&D ecosystem to ensure technology innovations can continue to pave the way for sustaining long-term US semiconductor leadership.
Our semiconductor consultants work with a variety of clients across the global semiconductor market to launch new products, boost efficiency, and more.
