There are considerably fewer shop-floor workers
in semiconductor manufacturing lines than in other
manufacturing industries, such as automobiles, textiles,
furniture, and so forth. The manufacturing lines
are mostly automated and are dependent on machine
precision; therefore, not much manual labor is required
(e.g., the molding process in EOL has only four workers).
To gather data from all workers was not possible
without stopping the processes (which is not possible).
Therefore, only a small sample size of 61 (35.7%)
of 171 workers was collected. The sample is still substantial,
however, because it is approximately one third
of the population and more than the minimum sample
size of 30 that is required for statistical analysis
(Sekaran, 2003). Different workers may provide different
answers to the questionnaire because of different
experiences, perceptions, height, weight, age, and gender.
Because of different semiconductor firms adopting
different technologies, machines, and processes, direct
comparison studies are not feasible. They have to be
dealt with on a case-to-case basis.