An Approach to Develop Key Performance Indicators for Chip Design Projects Considering Sensitivity

In times of increasing global competition and shrinking time-to-market windows improving business processes is getting more and more important. Performance measurement and management are the keys to persist and gain market share. Although appropriate frameworks are widely used in all kinds of companies worldwide, the design process of semiconductor chips knows no technically mature metrics to evaluate performance and productivity. Building up a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for semiconductor design projects is an inevitable step to measure and thus improve the processes. In this work, especially the aspects of scheduling, costs and quality should be taken into account.Absolute values do not express the sensitivity of the KPIs. However, it is essential for managerial decisions to what extend the KPIs change by varying related parameters. Thus, sensitivities derived should accompany each KPI by calculating the derivations.