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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
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
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
A Perspective on the Definition of Value in
the RF Supply Chain
Harvey Kaylie, Founder and CEO, Mini-Circuits
30 l New-Tech Magazine Europe