1.

What accounts for the major differences in timing, resource utilization, and results between the
first and second product generations (the 8100 and 8300)? What is your evaluation of the
division's own analysis of what was learned in those two development efforts?

For the first product 8100, the goal was to release to market as quickly as possible, hence Applied
introduces the very basic design with the capability to process only one type of four different
materials – Oxide. Because of its demand, the oxide process was released first, which captured 50%
of the total market for dry plasma etching, but the significant problems followed its initial success. It
needed substantial engineering in the field during its first year. Almost after 2 years, by 1983, it was
considered reliable product.

Applied did not want to repeat the same mistake again, hence reliability was the goal of their
second product 8300, which was planned to start on Nov 1982 and was expected to complete by
Dec 1984, but numerous reasons contributed for failing the schedule, it was almost a year behind,
top three of those reasons as explained in exhibit 3 are

 Unanticipated objectives got priority over the original goals.

 Under-estimation of the work at the beginning of the project.
 Not clearly defined engineering specifications.

Though at the beginning of 8300, the team was confident that the process knowledge that had been
gained on the 8100 would translate directly to the 8300, the different scale and configuration of the
new process chamber created a number of unforeseen problems. Moreover, the groups working on
the various subassemblies communicated poorly and the engineering functions worked on isolation
dealing with their own problems. To add to it, the economic recession in the semiconductor market
affected the overall motivation of the team.

Any project with no clear defined goals and proper project management principles are prone to
failure, the same became the reality for 8300 as well. Unlike 8100, since the goal for 8300 was to
produce the high-quality reliable product, the team conducted thorough reliability evaluations on all
aspects of the completed design. These tests identified further modifications which added to the
overall timeline of the product. Hence it was released 1 year later than the anticipated date.

2. How do you think the third generation development project (the 5000) is proceeding? Is it
ahead of schedule? Why? How does this third generation differ from the first two generation
projects?

For 5000, the first four months of the program had gone extremely well; the proof of feasibility
scheduled for September 15 would be reached by all small groups. The management of ADT was
providing well balanced. Somekh, Wang and Maydan was involved in the day-to-day work and
played active role in any decisions that had to be made. Somekh provided detailed organization
to the project and gave control to the business units until the conflicj arose, which was equitably
resolved without much hindering he progress.
 In addition, 5000 generated tremendous internal interest and unforeseen excitement with the
customers. This further convinced the development team that they were on the right track but
increased the pressure to get it to market quickly.
This fueled the informal competition among the teams and the management was viewed as high
energy with activity focused environment. Long hours like 12 hours per day seemed normal and
16 hours per days was not unusual.

3. What recommendations would you make to Dan Maydan and his division concerning the issues
he faces at the end of the case?

Time is critical in the product success or failure, I would recommend Dan Maydan to work on the
speeding-up the development process and compress the timeline to achieve 11-month
acceleration. While doing so, it is critical to make sure they don’t repeat the same mistakes as
with 8100. The summary mentioned in the article looks like a good starting steps to compress
the overall timeline

 Start parallel integration phases earlier, so the issues could be identified and acted upon
sooner.
 Adding more people to work on parallel on Etch integration and CVD to save time.
However, getting new outside talent means, it is import to provide cross-training and
distribute the priorities to mitigate the overall risk.
 Plan “optimization” period properly ahead in time and keep the sufficient buffer for the
fixes, hence avoid the costly field retrofits.

Finally, to keep up the team spirit, I would believe the incentive structure should be transparent
and should directly reflect to the effort put by the team involved in 5000 project. Also, due the
risk that company as an overall, id it makes huge success in this product, it should reward the
employees based on performance.