Training & education expenditures as an intelligent predicator for enterprise services in Taiwan

Globalization has resulted in the lowering of capacity utilization and hence a continued increase in unit labour cost in the Taiwanese semiconductor. The industry has been forced to consolidate, lay off employees or relocate production lines overseas. Leading players in Taiwan have been serving as OEMs to increase outputs. It is essential to boost output efficiency with limited resources. This paper examines the relationship between the training and education expenditures and operating performance of leading semiconductor companies in Taiwan with the training and education expenditures sampled from financial databases. By applying data mining classification and clustering techniques, this paper seeks to identify the correlation between these two factors and describe the impact of training and educational activities on operating performances. It is hoped that the research findings can assist the industry to improve the effectiveness of training and education programs so as to boost competitive advantages.