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Value chain's missing link, Part I: Tailwinds' collaborative plan to optimize customer operations |
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Feb 06, 2008 at 01:22 PM |
What do chipmakers, semiconductor equipment companies, solar manufacturers, display producers, and medical equipment companies have in common? A fragmented supply chain, often regional with inconsistent global reach and spotty quality, which offers far less value and efficiency to either end of the user-vendor spectrum than it might.
Imagine a sophisticated, Web-enabled one-stop shop, a neutral facilitator not tied to any single OEM or materials house, which could provide an integrated global network of outsource solutions for used/refurbished/surplus equipment and subsystems, cleanroom and materials consumables, spare parts, inventory oversight, preventive maintenance, parts cleaning, life-cycle management, even fab decommissioning/recommissioning, all under a single virtual (and in some cases physical) roof.
That's the intriguing vision of Tailwinds, a new company offering what may be the next big link currently missing in the value chain.
I spoke with company founder/chairman/CEO/president/head cheerleader Dennis Riccio last week about his latest venture in advance of Tailwinds' coming-out party.
The 30-year-plus industry veteran is no stranger to the fab and equipment services business, having led Metron as president/COO/managing director until it was bought by Applied Materials. Now he's back in the game, with a strategy that he believes will offer a balanced, neutral approach to bridging the supply-chain gap between end-manufacturers and the production equipment, materials, and services community.
"We support both the end-user and supplier constituencies," he explained. "Although I wouldn't call ourselves eHarmony.com, we bring the two together in a way that can be pretty efficient and effective. We're taking a holistic approach to global customer operations. If you think about the best OEMs, that's the level of customer-facing front end that we're creating at Tailwinds. That's why it's a dramatic departure from a rep organization or a distributor."
Tailwinds' chief orchestrator, Dennis Riccio
The evolution of the new company's gameplan took a significant turn last July when it became apparent that Tailwinds' initial four "icons" or focus areas---equipment/instruments, materials/logistics, productivity services, and consulting services---opened the door to a potentially lucrative emerging---and un(der)served---segment.
"When Liz (Baird, VP of corporate communications and brand development) and I first put the platform together back at the Ritz Carlton during Semicon West, there were only four icons," relates Dennis. "We looked at those four icons and it quickly pushed us in a new direction, which is again tied to the activity going on in the marketplace, of wafer fabs coming offline, and that's the icon of fab redeployment.
"Tailwinds is uniquely positioned to be able to handle the entire activity of either selling the wafer fab to a new owner, or selling the line and the process to a new owner that's in a different region. Or the third possibility, which could more often be the case, which is no one wants to buy the fab in situ, no one want to buy the line and transfer it, and the situation you end up with, is needing to shut down the factory, part out the tools, part out the subfab, and get as much asset recovery as you can."
With dozens of fabs being sold, shut down, or recommissioned, and hundreds and hundreds of tools and subsystems flooding into the marketplace---a multibillion-dollar asset-transfer opportunity---Dennis sees this redeployment segment as being a major part of the company's business, feeding into all the other icons, whether it's with reconditioned, upgraded heritage or legacy equipment sales (and spare parts and service for those refurbed systems), engineering and life-cycle services and consulting, or a full, turnkey, soup-to-nuts package for factory decommissioning.
Although it is rapidly increasing its own services and sales workforce and infrastructure, the upstart's grand strategy will not succeed without its cadre of partner suppliers, eight of which are already on board, with at least five more companies close to signing on. The network will offer, as the company's own press materials state, "standard and customized products, services and integrated solutions through Tailwinds as well as through their own sales channels."
The initial partners are engineering/technology consultancy Abbie Gregg; consumables supplier Connecticut Cleanroom; Decon Environmental Services (decontamination, hazmat remediation, etc.); Delphon Industries' Ultratape cleanroom tape division; FMG, a vacuum pump rebuilder and repairer; wafer-handling equipment specialist G2 Automated Technologies; LSA-Cleanpart (parts cleaning and engineering services); and silicon wafer solutions provider WaferNet.
Not only does Tailwinds' model apparently offer the customer a more complete products and services solution, but it also provides an opportunity for some excellent partner companies to spread their wings beyond their geographic base. "Since we're in between the suppliers and the customers, we can really accelerate a suppliers' business by being able to take them global; and by doing that, we can really help the customer get a capability that might only exist in one region, to be available on a daily basis." notes Dennis.
"For example, one of our partners, FMG, the pump guys, has been in business since the '80s, and is probably one of the best pump refurb companies in the world, but they're only regional. If we do our job right, FMG will be more than just a Santa Clara name, it'll become a capability throughout the US and on a global basis. The sad part is, there are really good suppliers in one region or another, but they don't have the capital resources or the management capability to go beyond the area they're in."
In tomorrow's second part of Chip Shots' coverage of the Tailwinds' launch, head honcho Dennis Riccio talks about other aspects of the company's business model and specific examples of unmet needs and opportunities in the marketplace.
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