New-Tech Europe Magazine | July 2017

A Perspective on the Definition of Value in the RF Supply Chain

Harvey Kaylie, Founder and CEO, Mini-Circuits

Whether you’ve been in the RF and microwave world for five years or fifty years, we’ve seen the industry change at a continuously accelerating pace. We’ve watched consolidation on a historic scale, where brand names in the 70’s, 80’s, and even 90’s, like Watkins Johnson, Avantek, Anzac, RHG disappeared, leaving fewer suppliers in the RF space than we’ve seen in a long time. As this evolution takes place, there’s an undercurrent in our industry – and a fear for some – that we’re moving to a commoditized market, that soon, one product will be interchangeable with the next, and that the applications engineer will be replaced by an online widget. Designing in a part may eventually be as simple as picking a part number out of a catalog, plugging it in, and bingo! It works. In this future, you

engineer in 1957, about 60 years ago. At that time, the RF market was a cottage industry. In the post- World-War-II, pre-Vietnam era, the military market was the main driver in terms of demand for quantity and consistency of products. RF applications were really limited to military communications, radar, broadcast, and that was about it. There were a few large OEMs like GE, RCA, Westinghouse, and then there was a fringe of smaller, specialized companies like Airborne Instrument Labs, Sperry Gyroscope, Cardion, and Wheeler Labs. At that time, the component- level supply base was a cadre of tiny companies. Garage shops, mostly. They were founder/owner companies established around one

don’t have to think anymore. And if that’s the direction we’re headed, how will we, as an industry, define value? Is value something different now than it was five, ten, or even fifty years ago? If it’s not a function of performance, and we define it solely in terms of price and delivery time, is the RF market any different from digital markets where repeatable performance and interchangeability are givens? These are questions on many people’s minds, and I’d like to offer my perspective on what value means in the RF and microwave industry today. Then and Now: from Cottage Industry to Consumer Market Scale I started working as a junior RF

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