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Distributors Offer OEM Engineers First-Class Training Programs
By Diane Trommer

Today's original equipment manufacturer (OEM) design engineers can incorporate more than 100 million integrated circuits into a single microchip, which can power devices from palm-sized computers to space-age satellite systems. But like a kid in a candy store, today's engineers can often be overwhelmed by the seemingly limitless technology choices. To help engineers wade through this mass of data, leading electronic component distributors offer educational programs on the latest technology offerings from their supplier partners.

"In the age of the Internet, there is no shortage of component information available to OEM engineers," says Bill Davies, director of technical marketing for Nu Horizons Electronics Corp., Melville, N.Y. "In fact, most designers have access to more information than they could ever possibly use. That's where we come in. Our job is to help them assimilate this information as quickly and efficiently as possible, and provide either a full- or a half-day program that enables customers to wade through the hype so they can concentrate their efforts on the technology."

Nu Horizons has broadened both the types of training programs it offers, as well as the number of different technologies it addresses in these programs. "As technologies become more complex, our customers need to have a much deeper technical understanding of the technology to make an intelligent evaluation for their project needs," he says. Focusing on small, hands-on events, Nu Horizons currently has 14 different seminars and workshops available through its "XpressTrack" technical seminar program.

Avnet Electronics Marketing offers two types of workshop-based training programs: its SpeedWay and On-Ramp Design workshop series. On-Ramp programs are two- to three-hour supplier-specific seminars that are conducted at a customer's site, while SpeedWay events are full-day workshops open to multiple customers, explains Marc Gsand, vice president of technical marketing for Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas (EMA), Phoenix.

Through these programs, Avnet provides a bridge between supplier technologies and the customers that want to adopt them, Gsand says. "We focus these workshops on technologies that are true differentiators - something that we can wrap a development board around so that customers can come in, test out the devices, and learn how to use them and how they interface with other chips." Each year, more than 5,000 OEM engineers attend Avnet's SpeedWay and On-Ramp workshops, Gsand reports.

In addition to these kinds of in-depth, hands-on workshops, OEM designers are also looking for more technology-oriented training, Gsand says. "Historically, distributor training was either part- or supplier-specific and involved little more than just pushing information from the suppliers to the customers. Today, the unique benefit distributors bring to our customers is the ability to offer an independent forum to look at technology across multiple suppliers, such as our X-Fest event."

While X-Fest originated 10 years ago as a marketing and training vehicle for Xilinx Inc., Avnet has expanded the program in response to customer demand for more bundled technology solutions. This year, the three-month program will include technology solutions from a broad range of suppliers, including Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, National Semiconductor, Intel and Murata. "We really wanted to drive the concept of providing system-level solutions to our customers, which means more than just designing in the Xilinx FPGA," says Jim Beneke, Avnet EMA's director of global Xilinx technical marketing.

X-Fest is not just about repackaging supplier-provided material and delivering it to customers. "In partnership with our suppliers and partners, we are creating presentations, demonstrations, reference designs and development boards that truly help our customers solve their system-design issues," adds Beneke. Avnet expects 5,000 to 7,000 OEM engineers to attend the X-Fest seminars that are scheduled to take place in 90 cities worldwide.

Texas Instruments is an X-Fest gold sponsor, and TI director of worldwide distribution John Simari says, "X-Fest is exactly what customers tell us they expect from the best distributors - a forum to understand solutions that integrate products from innovative suppliers like Texas Instruments and Xilinx. Otherwise, these customers would have to touch so many different people so many different times to accomplish the same thing."

Although distributors are taking more responsibility for creating workshop materials, supplier support is still critical, says Nu Horizons' Davies. "To be able to provide customers with the most timely technical data, we need to be working with suppliers before a product is launched, so that we can be prepared to support that product the minute it is launched."

Recognizing that distribution programs extend TI's reach into a customer base that the company itself could not practically service, Simari says TI is committed to giving distributors the tools they need to continue to best represent its technology to the market. For example, Simari notes that for the first time ever, this year TI invited distributor field application engineers (FAEs) to attend its annual Developer Conference, thereby giving them the chance to engage with OEM customers and TI technologists. And in May, Simari says, TI will host its annual High Performance Analog (HPA) Summit, in which distributor FAEs will spend three to four days in a university-style setting focusing on HPA products.

With this early access to new product data, Avnet's Gsand says distributors have been able to broaden the scope of who has access to new technology introductions. "Suppliers have traditionally focused their new-product introductions on the tier one accounts. Training was expensive and by invitation only; but now, with advance information from suppliers, we can have development boards ready the day a new product is introduced. So instead of waiting for months, tier two and three customers now have affordable access to these leading technologies from day one."

While hands-on workshops may be the most-effective model for evaluating active components, users of interconnect, passive and electromechanical (IP&E) devices tend to prefer Web-based seminars, according to Craig Conrad, chief marketing and strategic planning officer for TTI, Fort Worth, Texas. "With ever-shrinking time-to-market targets, many of our customers tell us they don't have time to attend an outside workshop or even to sit down with an FAE," Conrad says. "We've found the Web to be the most-effective and time-efficient way to reach out to our customers."

TTI offers about eight different technical hour-long webcasts per year that feature a market analyst and three different passive or connector suppliers. "These webcasts give customers the opportunity for a side-by-side comparison of multiple suppliers of a single technology," Conrad says. For those looking for an even quicker data download, TTI will begin offering 15-minute, supplier-specific product webcasts in conjunction with EETimes starting this month.