Memec creates design division: Company sees design services as competitive edge - News

Electronic News, May 6, 2002 by Rob Spiegel

The Memec Group of Thame, England, has formed Memec Design, a global division launched in order to consolidate the company's design services -- a function that previously was a component of each individual Memec company. Memec Design will serve Memec customers' need for design services and IP through 14 design centers, five of which are located in the United States, two in Canada, two in Europe and five in the Asia/Pacific area.

Memec Design will provide expertise in FPGA, ASIC, software and board-level design as well as IP creation and integration, according to the parent company.

Part of the objective in forming Memec Design is to, naturally enough, accelerate Memec's design activity. The company said its design services have been profitable for the past five years. Over the past two years, service revenue and customer designs have increased fourfold, Memec said.

Richard Joy will lead the new division as global VP. Joy brings 30 years of senior management experience gained at Cadence, Unisys, AMI and IBM. Most recently, he led the development of design services at Cadence Design Systems Inc.

Joy characterized the creation of Memec Design as a competitive strategy to help drive component sales. "The major emphasis is to stimulate our supplier silicon sales revenue. We want to lead by design," Joy said. "We want to help the OEM customers design. It's a competitive edge for Memec." Joy said the division does not intend to sell services except in the context of distribution business. "Our business plan will always be tied to our component distribution business. We basically form a bridge between the supplier and our OEM customers in partnership with the Memec companies."

The appointment of Joy was meant to bring both credibility and expertise to Memec Design. "Dick really brings a wealth of relevant experience to this role," said Matt Thompson, VP of worldwide sales for Marimba, a Mountain View, Calif.-based software company. Thompson is a longtime associate of Joy. "During his years with Cadence, the company benefited tremendously from his vast industry expertise and personal drive, which fueled the global expansion of their design services business." He interpreted Memec's appointment of Joy as a sign of the company's commitment to expanding its design services. "This addition to Memec's management team punctuates the value Memec places on design and is a remarkable occurrence for a technical distributor."

Joy agreed that design is important to The Memec Group's plans. "In the past, design was actually a small part of every division," Joy said. "It was optimized and taken full advantage of by all the companies. The idea was to pull it together and make it available to all the Memec companies."