Leading global semiconductor company, Infineon Technologies, has earmarked €250 million (S$440 million) to further expand its operations in Singapore, where it has located its regional headquarters for Asia, excluding Japan. For the 2011 fiscal year, Infineon is injecting approximately €50 million (S$88 million) to expand production capacity and research and development (R&D) in Singapore.

Over the next few years, the German corporation intends to pump an additional €200 million (S$352 million) into R&D and increase the number of R&D engineers from 260 to 390. The expansion will reinforce Infineon’s R&D activities in deep submicron System-on-Chip integration and multi-core architecture development based on Infineon's 32-Bit Tricore™ and power integrated circuit (IC) solutions.

"We are making a home in Asia so that we become locally rooted and more effective in developing our markets. Singapore is an ideal business and R&D spring board for Infineon to serve the region, as well as the main hub for sourcing knowledge and talents," says Mr Peter Bauer, CEO at Infineon Technologies AG.

Opened in 1991, Infineon's development centre in Singapore has capabilities across the complete IC chip development value chain - from concept engineering to ramp up management; design of analogue mixed-signal IP blocks and advanced packaging and test technologies development. Singapore is also Infineon’s supply chain hub in Asia. About 400 customer shipping addresses are served from the Singapore warehouse, with an estimated export value of over €1.5 billion. Infineon manages more than 25 production sites in Asia through its corporate supply chain functions in Singapore, and recently set up a Business Services Group to run supply chain improvement projects.

One noteworthy project is the SC³ or Semiconductor Supply Chain Science Centre. The centre looks at the optimisation of Infineon's entire supply chain, which involves multiple production partners, aiming to deliver innovative improvements to supply chain processes and automation solutions. An essential part of the R&D is done in partnership with local universities. These collaborations allow Infineon to tap on new ideas and findings from academia, while providing university students the valuable opportunity to interact with industry experts on supply chain management.