SEH-A Achieves "Level III Status" for HP Quality System Assessment

Hewlett-Packard’s recent Material Supply audit was a major success for SEH America, which earned HP's Certified Level III . From August 16 - 17, 2004, HP's Dr. Loreli Fister and Michael Ashdown audited SEH to the criteria specified in HP's internal Quality System Assessment (QSA). SEH-A scored 275 points out of 300 by the QSA criteria, which was above the minimum of about 264 needed to achieve the highest Level 3 status. SEH-A is the only silicon supplier to HP to receive Level III certification and one of only a small number of HP's suppliers to achieve this level. Lisa Cooper reflected on the achievement: “HP's audit results support the evidence of the hard work and dedication of everyone throughout SEH-A. They found that SEH-A's Quality Management System is mature, well understood and integrated into all processes with evidences of continual improvement." HP congratulated SEH on the achievement, but stressed "...the need to continue to build and improve upon the current quality system."

	Left to Right: Ben Bagherpour, SEH-A Director of Manufacturing; Shozaburo Goto, Former SEH-A Director of Quality Management; Dr. Zbigniew Radzimski, SEH-A Director of Technology; Tatsuo Ito, SEH-A Executive Vice President; Michael Ashdown, HP Commodity Manager; and Dr. Loreli Fister, HP Global IC Sourcing Engineer.

Quality system audits like HP's QSA are a primary tool for our customers to assess SEH-A's ability to send them a consistent, high quality, high value product on time, every time. Rather than relying on expensive incoming inspection, our customers make the assumption that if SEH-A's Quality System (our actual business practices) is good and well implemented, then they can have confidence in SEH as a supplier. This picture of overall quality given by a quality assessment audit, along with specific part performance, delivery, service, technology, and cost, are the key factors influencing our customer's decisions to buy wafers from SEH or one of our competitors.

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