The Tektronix Corp. was founded in 1946, by Howard Vollum, and acquired by Danaher in 2007. Headquartered in Beaverton, Or., the company serves engineering and technical professionals, by offering key products and markets, and respected brand based, high-quality, innovative products. With more than 40 years of custom microelectronics experience, its reputation is built on engineering excellence and global service by providing oscilloscopes, signal sources, logic analyzers, spectrum analyzers, and video tests.
A unique thing about Tektronix that many people may not know is that it has more than 700 patents issued in the U. S. alone across its entire product portfolio. The company is also a provider of multi-vendor calibration, repair and related services. Supporting more than 140,000 products from 9,000-plus manufacturers, they provide services across more than 100 points of service worldwide.
Tektronix’s top three competitors are: Agilent Technologies; Anritsu Corp; and, Rohde & Schwarz GmbH. Each of these companies specialize in electronic test and measurement equipment, diagnostic equipment used primarily for mobile radio and digital and analog television broadcasting applications, electronic devices for communications and industrial markets (such as wireless communications), and a slew of analytical and measurement instruments.
By focusing on products with leading edge performance, Tektronix addresses a wide range of applications with varied requirements for desired features, performance and price points. The primary challenge of manufacturing a product line with such breadth and depth is to maintain processes that can deliver the highest quality while optimizing yields and reliability.
Spyros Lazaris, Director of Marketing-Americas, has been with Tektronix for 15 years and has held various positions within the company.
“I feel our employees carry with them a sense of pride over our brand and the experience and innovation it stands for,” said Lazaris. “Our culture is built around top-notch people that have a high sense of integrity and teamwork, all working toward the same goal of addressing customer needs. It is the strong sense of ownership as we all drive for continuous improvement, from the development of new innovations to enhancing efficiencies in process and knowing that we are never satisfied with the status quo.”
A full-service resource for component technologies, Tektronix’s geographical growth perspective is strong in emerging markets like China, India, Brazil and Russia. From a product standpoint, there is an increasing demand from customers for wireless capability. In response to this industry trend, the MDO4000 Series of Mixed Domain Oscilloscopes was developed. Tektronix proudly boast that this was the first and is currently the only oscilloscope that can address analog, digital and RF domains. This product is aimed to provide engineers a view into their design that they’ve never had before. As a result, they can complete their designs faster and get to market more quickly.
The biggest change that Tektronix has seen in its customers over the past five years is the increasing growth in emerging markets. This growth is attributed to wireless communication. It is a constant pressure for customers to get designs out at a faster pace and needing to do more with less. Therefore, the demand to have wireless capabilities has made the company design products, which are wireless compatible.
Within this change in its customers’ needs are the biggest challenges Tektronix foresees: Keeping on top of customers’ current and future requirements. To meet this challenge, it has become an upmost priority to focus on helping the customers do more with less. This means giving them insight into what’s going on in their designs with even faster results than before, all in an effort to help them get their products to market in a shorter timeframe.
Tektronix
www.tektronix.com
Filed Under: Green engineering • renewable energy • sustainability, ELECTRONICS • ELECTRICAL
