A Symbol of Marketing and Sales Excellence
—Inspired by Bob Graham
The SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award is a prestigious award is given to recognize and honor an individual or group for outstanding contributions to customers through the creation or implementation of value-added marketing and/or sales concepts or strategies which enhance customer value and further the growth of the semiconductor equipment and materials industry.
SEMI® presents this award each year in memory of Bob Graham whose marketing prowess was unparalleled in our industry. His contributions were numerous and the impact of those contributions is still felt today. To learn more about Bob Graham, please refer to his biography.
Candidate Eligibility
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Nominees are welcome from SEMI member companies.
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Deceased persons cannot be nominated. Exception: Posthumous award may be presented if recipient’s death occurs after the Bob Graham Award Committee selects the recipient.
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Self-nominations are not accepted.
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Award Committee members cannot be nominated while serving on the committee.
Nomination Criteria
- The marketing and/or sales contribution has to have been implemented and shown to be producing desired results for at least three years.
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Marketing and/or sales contribution must have demonstrated market growth, or other measurable result.
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The marketing and/or sales contribution must be customer focused and have value to the customer.
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The marketing and/or sales contribution should be considered to be original and of strategic value to the semiconductor industry.
Selection Process
The SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award Committee is responsible for reviewing the nominations received. The Committee carefully considers each of the eligible candidates for the award.
If you know someone, or a group of people, whose achieve-ments should be recognized, please submit their name(s) for consideration
To nominate, click here
SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award Committee
Dr. Gopal Shankar — Committee Chairman
Director, Renewable Energy
Shapoorji Pallonji Group
Bill Arnold
Chief Scientist
Vice President, Technology Development Center
ASML
Dr. Peter Hanley
Experienced Semiconductor
Capex Executive & Consultant
G. Dan Hutcheson
CEO
VLSI Research Inc.
Dr. Winfried Kaiser
Senior Vice President
Product Strategy
Carl Zeiss
Colin Ritchie
Vice President System Level
Test Business
Advantest America Inc.
Dr. Anantha Sethuramam
General Manager
Service Product Development
Applied Global Services
Applied Materials Inc.
Larry Smith
President
Tokyo Electron America
Bill Tobey
President
ACT International
SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award Recipients
The prestige of the SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award, and the enormous legacy of
Bob Graham, is reflected in the high caliber of past recipients.
2019: Mitsunobu (Nobu) Koshiba
Koshiba’s focus on 193nm dry, 193nm immersion and extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) resists – all vitally important to JSR Corporation customers – accelerated their development. He served as a key bridge between JSR Corporation’s research and development initiatives and its customers in aligning the company with their needs. Koshiba also led the important pivot from 157nm to 193nm immersion.
2018: Luc Van den hove
Van den hove will receive the 21st SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award for his contributions and leadership in consortia that made the imec model of collaborative research using pooled infrastructure self-sustaining. The model enables companies of all sizes and position in the value chain to participate in collaborative research that advances industry technology.
2017: Toshio Maruyama
Mr. Maruyama was the first in ATE to market reliability as a key product advantage, driving all SEMI members to improve reliability and thereby benefiting the semiconductor industry as a whole.
2016: Jim Bowen
Mr. Bowen was the first ATE executive to thoroughly employ comprehensive product marketing, technical sales and merchandising that broke the $1M barrier for semiconductor equipment prices. He created a system of selling test system value rather than technology.
2015: Tetsuro (Terry) Higashi
Mr. Higashi was recognized for his role as a catalyst in the build-out of the Albany infrastructure and with numerous marketing and sales contributions. Importantly, he set a new standard for partnerships with his “trusted relationship style,” as well as widely promoting a collaboration model of industry engagement. He was also cited for being one of the few Japanese executives to actively pursue a path of globalization.
2014: Winfried Kaiser
Mr. Kaiser led ZEISS’s strategic marketing and the company’s collaborations especially with ASML. He is credited with aligning ZEISS to the optical needs of lithography equipment manufacturers and their customers by coordinating three tiers of the semiconductor supply chain: semiconductors, equipment, and advanced optics. These collaborations cover 248nm and 193nm wavelength, as well as liquid immersion (high NA) lens product development and the launch of the EUV program in Europe.
2013: J.C. Kim
Joung Cho (JC) Kim, retired chairman of Edwards Korea Limited, had a major impact on the industry. In 1985, when semiconductor manufacturers used rotary pumps, he introduced Fomblin oil to the Korean market. This reduced pump process problems and resulted in substantial process improvement, higher productivity and cost savings. He also marketed a new "dry" vacuum pump design. He persuaded manufacturers to try the dry pump on their production lines, contributing to higher productivity and a more stable process. In addition, he improved service efficiency for dry pumps by establishing 24-hour/day on-site field service offices in or near customer fabs, preventing large production losses from process interruption.
2012: G. Dan Hutcheson
Mr. Hutcheson has had a major impact on the industry. Most of the leading firms in the industry rely upon his research services, databases, and consulting services to plan and guide their strategic investments. His email newsletter, The Chip Insider®, contains a mix of industry insider facts, forecasts, market opportunities and threats, as well as industry debates among recipients. His book, Maxims of Tech, chronicles how our Industry’s leaders have innovated — providing key business lessons. Together, his activities empower executives with strategic and tactical marketing value.
2011: Franz Janker
Mr. Janker is recognized for his contributions to developing and implementing the concepts of "SERVICE AS A BUSINESS" as well as the Total Solutions Concept, which both evolved to be very valuable programs for Applied Materials and its customers.
2010: Martin van den Brink
Mr. Van den Brink has systematically aligned ASML’s core competencies to customer needs, which has led to continued market growth in lithography. His relentless push for lower cost of ownership via throughput improvements and tighter CDs has helped keep the lithography market alive.
2009: Peter Hanley
Mr. Hanley was recognized for the development of many original marketing and sales concepts (still implemented today) that lead directly to significant revenue and markets share gains for companies he has served. One of Hanley’s noted accomplishments was helping to keep Moore’s Law on track through the introduction of the “pay for performance” and “performance guarantee” business models, which changed the dynamics between customers and suppliers and expanded the served available market (SAM). In addition, Hanley was early to recognize the importance of the transition from aluminum to copper, and was instrumental in initiation and implementation of strategic (technology and marketing) programs in his company, effectively introducing copper two generations earlier than the ITRS predicted.
2008: Richard Hong
Mr. Hong was recognized for being the first person to successfully implement “In Line Monitoring” at a major semiconductor manufacturer (Samsung) and he proved that this concept would have a dramatic positive impact on yield and hence the way that all future semiconductor fabs through out the world would ultimately run their fabs utilizing this ILM concept.
2007: Richard E. Dyck
Mr. Dyck was recognized for facilitating greater cultural awareness and business relationships between the Japanese semiconductor industry and the U.S. semiconductor industry. He contributed greatly to the development of the industry in Japan and played a pivotal role in expanding the opportunities for U.S. equipment suppliers there.
2006: Aubrey C. (Bill) Tobey
Mr. Tobey was recognized for conceptualizing the wafer stepper as a natural extension of the D.W. Mann photorepeater, and for promoting its advantages over the then-popular e-beam direct exposure approach. Because of Tobey's marketing presence, the wafer stepper became one of the most significant tools in semiconductor manufacturing.
2005: Archie Hwang
Mr. Hwang is recognized for being the first to promote and develop a service infrastructure and culture for semiconductor equipment sales in Taiwan. He established local support and spare parts centers for fast response and offered free training to enable customers to quickly learn how to use equipment, which has since become the central strategy for any semiconductor equipment company entering the Taiwan market.
2004: Ed Braun
Mr. Braun was recognized for successfully developing products and alliances across multiple markets. This strategy helped offset high R&D costs for specific technologies and minimized the effects of the silicon cycles on small semiconductor equipment companies.
2003: Shigeru (Steve) Nakayama
Mr. Nakayama was recognized for his effective marketing efforts in unifying the semiconductor equipment and materials industry and securing international cooperation during the period of trade friction between the US and Japan in the 1980's. His great achievement was to successfully market the idea that global competitiveness is good for the entire industry.
2002: Jerry Hutcheson and Edward Sega
Mr. Hutcheson was recognized for pioneering and developing the semiconductor equipment industry’s first database. Mr. Segal was recognized for implementing the semiconductor industry’s first global sales and support organization.
2001: Jim Healy and Barry Rapozo
The Committee selected two industry veterans to receive the Award in 2001. They were honored for the establishment of relationship-based selling processes that identified and met customer needs.
2000: Arthur Zafiropoulo
Mr. Zafiropoulo was the first recipient of the Bob Graham Award. He was honored for the use of marketing to help win acceptance of plasma-etching and mix-and-match lithography.