Tektronix president Amir Aghdaei sees big opportunities in the test market and the company has created a 10 year product technology plan to address them.
“We are here to stay for the long run,” Amir Aghdaei told Electronics Weekly at Electronica last month.
“We have increased our investment in the last three years and it continues to increase as a percentage of revenues,” said Aghdaei.
In the company’s benchtop test instrument product lines, which Aghdaei called the core business, he said there is a new focus on market segments and applications rather than on the instrument technologies themselves.
“We have doubled the number of test applications we offer this year and we will double them again next year,” he said.
Aghdaei said that a feature of the test market today is that instruments are sold on the strength of their applications rather than pure performance.
“The ability togged answers quickly is important and we are looking always to make user interfaces quicker,” said Aghdaei.
“We are continuing to do this with our scopes,” he added.
The company’s also broadened its product ranges with a number of key acquisitions in the last 12 months and Aghdaei indicated that the company was still on the look out for further deals.
“There are still many opportunities to broaden our product offering,” said Aghdaei.
“If the last 12 months is anything to go by it tells you what the next year may look like,” said Aghdaei.
One area which the company is developing is in synthetic instrumentation and PC-based test systems through its partnership with National Instruments. But Aghdaei sees PC-based test as an addition to the product offering and not a replacement for benchtop instruments.
“The user model is different. It may have the advantage of simplicity but there can be degradation of speed and processing performance,” said Aghdaei.
“I do not see PC-based test systems as a replacement for benchtop instruments, for us it is another way to broaden the product line,” said Aghdaei.
The company’s approach to the scope market is representative of its application focused strategy, says Aghdaei.
“We see its a continuum from 500MHz scopes to greater that 20GHz instruments, but the needs are different across the market, so we must offer the instruments and also the applications, the probes and services,” said Aghdaei.
In 2007 was acquired for $2.8bn by US industrial group Danaher, already the owner of Fluke, and according to Aghdaei, the last three years under the ownership of Danaher have been very beneficial to the running of the Tektronix test business.
“The Danaher business system is to optimise the day-to-day running of the company,” said Aghdaei. “we've seen gross margins improve and increased investment in the company and R&D.”
One form this investment has taken is acquisitions. There has been five acquisitions in the last 12 months, most recently the purchase of benchtop and production test firm, Keithley Instruments.
And there may be more deals. “We are broadening our horizon all the time and there are plenty of opportunities to expand the product portfolio,” said Aghdaei.
“The company has a business strategy for the next three to five years and already there are plans for the next 10 to 15 years,” said Aghdaei.