Distributors focus on design services
Staff -- Purchasing, 8/17/2006 2:00:00 AM
Buyers can expect electronics distributors to beef up their design services offerings and their overall technical expertise of parts over the next year as more electronics OEMs outsource at least part of their design activity to distributors.
Purchasers need to look carefully at distributors' design service capabilities such as application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and field programmable gate array (FPGA) and board design.
In some cases distributors charge for services. Distributors typically charge for ASICs design service, but not for use of field application engineers (FAEs).
Distributors say they are seeing increased demand for all types of services because more OEMs are outsourcing design.
“The market is very robust in the design area,” says Rafael Cruz, vice president of design services at Avnet. “We are seeing a lot of activity. Demand for design services is coming across all industries. We see mid tier and large tier companies outsourcing design to us,” he says.
A lot of activity centers on FPGA and ASICs for system being design by OEMs. In some cases, Avnet provides design tools for customers. “We create tools to help customers in development, so they don't have to do a lot of work themselves,” says Cruz.
He says there is strong demand for reference designs. Reference designs can include a whole bill of materials, Gerber files, layouts and source code.
Rafael says Avnet partners with outside design houses to design boards for customers, but Avnet will customize an existing board for an OEM.
While many distributors see an increase in demand from mid-tier and larger OEMS, even smaller OEMs are looking to distributors for design help.
“In the past, only large companies with multiple projects would outsource some design. Now, it is the smaller customer,” says Theron Mackley, director of engineering for Arrow Electronics in Melville, N.Y. He says across all tiers, “more customers than not are outsourcing at least a piece of their design.”
In many cases, field application engineers determine the services that the OEM needs.
In some instances, “our FAEs write a piece of code for some hardware or do a proof of concept layout that shows that the design works,” says Mackley. “Customers often don't want just a reference board. They want to see that the reference works and know how a piece of their intellectual property (IP) will run on it. We call that proof of concept rather than just reference design,” he says.
Arrow also has a Custom Logic Solutions Group that handles FPGA and ASIC design. “We can do a fully customized turnkey ASIC from them,” says Mackley.
Arrow also has a network of design houses it refers customers to for large design projects.
Some distributors' design services focus on education and tools concerning new technology. Case-in-point: Nu Horizons based in Melville, N.Y.
Dave Bowers, Nu Horizons president says, “This year we'll have more than 5,000 customer engineers training at Nu Horizons facilities around the world.”
Nu Horizon provides training on DSP imaging and product emulation packages,
Bowers says Nu Horizons also provides reference designs and has 84 FAEs around the world to assist OEMs. The FAEs are experts in power management, digital signal processors, high-end processors, controllers and radio frequency (RF) components among others.
It also has partnered with 100 design houses in North America and Asia to handle ASIC designs.
Some distributors have design expertise centered around value-add services. An example is Jaco Electronics in Hauppage, N.Y. Jaco has a liquid crystal display (LCD) business, which requires value-added services such as subassembly build and LCD modification to change brightness and viewing angles. Jaco provides technical expertise and design services around its LCD business.
“It starts with supporting the customer with the selection of an LCD,” says Bob Savacchio, vice president flat panel displays at Jaco. Many customers may know just the size they need, but there are other issues. “They may need a specific brightness, specific viewing angles and the equipment may have to operate in certain environmental conditions. We advise them on what LCD panels would support those specific needs,” he says.
LCD panels often require various ancillary products such as controller cards, cables, and touch screens and Jaco provides OEMs expertise on those products as well.
A growing part of Jaco's LCD business is designing and manufacturing subassemblies for customers, says Savacchio.
“We are moving to subassemblies where we provide customers a drop-in solution to a display enclosure. We design bracketry for the enclosure and the whole unit is mounted,” he says. “So we design the mechanical configuration for the subassembly and we will manufacture it, too.”
Jaco is beginning to design complete displays for customers, not just subassemblies.
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