Intel, the World's Biggest Chip Maker, Is Unique in Way It Rolls Out New Manufacturing Methods
Intel Corp., the world's biggest chip maker, is unique in the way it rolls out new manufacturing methods, perfecting it in a laboratory and then painstakingly duplicating it at factories around the world.
The strategy, first employed in the mid-1980s, is called "Copy Exactly." And the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company means it.
Engineers strive to duplicate even the subtlest of manufacturing variables, from the color of a worker's gloves to the type of fluorescent lights in the building. Employees from around the world spend more than a year at a development lab in Oregon learning their small piece of the new recipe so they can bring it back to their home factory.