Change is occurring at a rapidly accelerating rate. New technologies, new competitors and new requirements emerge many times faster than they did just a few years ago. Concurrently, there are ever-growing economic premiums for being first to the market. Hence, there is constantly increasing pressure to reduce the time for stresses, studies, trials, experiments, qualifications, etc.

At the same time, the impact of a failure has ever-expanding consequences. For example, the failure of a power transmission line on August 14^th, 2003, and its cascading effect on the power grid caused 50 million people across the U.S. and Canada to lose power for three days and cost an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion in various damages and losses.

In today's world, semiconductor ICs control mission critical functions in airplanes and pacemakers to nuclear reactors and ABS brakes. Big customers use multiple millions of a single part number and easily differentiate 3 ppm performance from .7ppm performance. So, the importance of quality and reliability in our products has never been higher.

How are management, designers, reliability and quality professionals dealing with these competing pressures? Are we adequately assessing and managing the risk, or are we perhaps overly focused on a niche element, maybe missing the forest for the trees?

As professionals, it is crucial we constantly examine our activity and drive to best manage the overall risk from failure while minimizing the time of study and the resources needed. Michael Crichton eloquently argued in the novel "Prey" that technological change is occurring so rapidly that we may actually fall prey to mismanaging tomorrow's risks if our thinking is too framed by yesterday's or even today's thinking.

Bringing focus and, more importantly, priority in how best to manage the overall reliability risks in the semiconductor business I think should be one of the prime goals of bodies like the IRW.

At AMI Semiconductor, being focused almost exclusively in high reliability markets such as automotive, medical, avionics, military and high-end industrial, we are keenly aware of the impact quality levels have on our success or lack of success. Hence, excellence in quality and reliability is a prime strategic objective of the company.

In this keynote address, I hope to share some of our thinking, strategy and results in this area and hopefully set the stage for a healthy exchange on managing tomorrow's risks today.