General Principles

The four regions Americas, Europe, Japan and Asia Pacific have regional organizations of WSTS member companies, the so called Chapters. Chapters meet regularly and develop policies and proposals for the operation of WSTS. In addition the Chapters appoint their representatives in the Board of Directors and elect a Vice Chairman, who represents the respective region in the Executive Committee. The Chairman of the Executive Committe however is elected by the Committee, which in turn is composed of one representative of each member company. The tenure of WSTS officers is 18 month. Re-election for a second period is possible. Communication between these various functions happens by correcspondence, through this Internet Portal and by meetings. Chapters meet two to four times a year, the Board of Directors convenes twice a year (in May and November) and the Executive Committe meets at least twice a year, too. Also the Committee has two meetings per year, normally co-timed and co-located with the venue of the Board of Directors and the Executive Commitee. Obviously the Chapter meetings take place in the respective region, wheras all other meetings with worldwide participation rotate among the regions. This scheme provides equitable opportunities for all Committee members to participate.

WSTS cooperates closely with the regional Semiconductor Industry Associations. These organizations participate as observers in all major meetings and provide an alternative feedback channel from the semiconductor industry, supplemementary to the information that is brought in by the company representatives in the Committee. Semiconductor industry organizations hold also distribution licenses for WSTS reports and thereby provide a commercial distribution channel for these reports to non-semiconductor companies and organizations.

As WSTS collects revenue data from competitors it is mandatory that such data is compiled and consolidated by Data Collection Agents before this data is conveyed to WSTS for the generation of statistic reports. In order to provide best protection to individual member companies' trade data, WSTS uses three Data Collection Agents, one for consolidation of Japanese member companies' data, one for consolidation of Europe member companies' data and another one who consolidates the data of all Asia Pacific and Americas companies. The latter Data Collection Agent also performs the worldwide consolidation of the data from the regions. Data Collection Agents have the typical professional qualification of certified public accountants and are service providers to both the member companies and WSTS in an armlength relationship.

The WSTS employees, the Administrator and the Assistent to Administrator are responsible for the operation of all WSTS programs, for the publication of all reports and any other content of this Internet Portal, for the organization of meetings, for member services and for the financial management of the WSTS.